


A Portrait in Synesthesia

by DiminishingReturns



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: 6000 Years of Pining (Good Omens), Angst, Aziraphale also hates the 14th century, Child Death, Crowley Hates the 14th Century (Good Omens), Eventual Happy Ending, Grief, M/M, Magical Realism, Memory Loss, Mutual Pining, Nature Imagery, POV Alternating, Podfic Available, Pre-Fall (Good Omens), Sexual Content, Slow Burn, Soulmates, Synesthesia, but just in small bursts, comfort and hope in much brighter bursts, depictions of illness (plague), emotionally significant handshakes, historical vignettes, in which I take the Book of Genesis and throw it in a blender, it's an OT3 where Earth is the third, mentions of suicidal intent, not as dark as these tags are making it sound, pining but keep it gentle. keep it soft., pulls on my best Michael from The Good Place voice: soulmates are made not found, space symbolism, the author knows more about color theory than religion and it shows, think of it like the flash of a lighthouse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-13
Updated: 2020-04-10
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:14:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 21
Words: 98,765
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22687558
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DiminishingReturns/pseuds/DiminishingReturns
Summary: In the innocent time before the Fall complicated everything, one shy, studious chronicler and one curious, chaotic starmaker fell in love. They were left with no memory of each other, but the soul remembers what the mind forgets, and their experiences together left them with a unique kind of synesthesia— the emotional state, mannerisms, and voice of one having a paired physical response (smell, taste, or color) in the other.Follow Aziraphale and Crowley from the pre-Fall times to the Apocalypse as these heightened earthly senses continually pull them back together. At first, they meet tentatively under Halley’s Comet, the last thing Crowley created as a starmaker and an excuse to keep returning to one another’s orbit. But over the millennia, their relationship deepens and they find new reasons to seek each other’s company.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens), Crowley & Original Female Character
Comments: 513
Kudos: 232
Collections: AJ’s personal faves, Good Omens Big Bang 2019, Ixnael’s Recommendations, Our Own Side, Very Good Omens





	1. The stubborn will of gravity

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was written for the 2019 Good Omens Big Bang in collaboration with **katartstrophe**. Their absolutely stunning art will be embedded in a later chapter, or you can follow [this link](https://katartstrophe.tumblr.com/post/190799883141/i-knew-you-in-the-marigolds-i-loved-you-in-the) to admire it now! Follow katartstrophe [on Tumblr](https://katartstrophe.tumblr.com/) or [on Twitter](https://twitter.com/katartstrophe).
> 
> The HUGEST thank you to [imperiousheiress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperiousheiress) for being an amazing human and an incredible friend, but especially for beta-ing this monster (and sticking with me as the word count ballooned and then ballooned again). They put in some serious hours and made this fic shine. 
> 
> Special love and thanks also go to [curtaincall](https://archiveofourown.org/users/curtaincall), [mutalune](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutalune), [GottaGoBuyCheese ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GottaGoBuyCheese), [TheOldAquarian](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheOldAquarian), and [EdensGardener](https://edensgardener.tumblr.com/) for the brainstorming sessions, input on early drafts, tireless pep talks, and emotional support over the past several months. Something-something-the-real-fic-is-the-friends-I-made-along-the-way… except for real because these superheroes kept my head above water when I was ready to let this project languish indefinitely in the WIP folder. I love you guys a whole lot.
> 
> A note about the "depictions of illness" tag: there are two chapters that take place during pandemics (the plague of Justinian and the Black Death). While I do work to find the glimmers of light and the hope in dark situations with this fic, I completely understand that folks might not want to read about that sort of thing right now. I'm more interested in providing context than worried about light plot spoilers, and have added content warnings to the tops of those two chapters.
> 
> Follow me on tumblr [@jessicafish](https://jessicafish.tumblr.com/) if you'd like! I like making friends, so come say hi!
> 
> A podfic for this fic is in the works! It's fully casted and comes with ORIGINAL MUSIC and incredible foley work and is blowing my whole dang mind. Check it out [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24894388/chapters/60234892)!

_“What we call the beginning is often the end_  
 _And to make an end is to make a beginning._  
 _The end is where we start from.”_

-T.S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

The thing about beginnings is that they always go wrong. You don’t get to plan the beginning of something. Not really. Certainly, you can lay the plans, imagine how a thing will go, let it play out in your head time and time again— but we all know what they say about the best laid plans. What you may _not_ know, is that the best laid plans of gods can also go awry, but one of the perks of being an almighty and all-powerful being is that the word “ineffable” and a vague wave of the hand allows you all sorts of leeway.

Endings, much like beginnings, are never what we picture. The vexing business of _the middle_ sees to that. That strange and unknowable landscape where plans go awry and take on a chaotic life of their own. There are no maps of this in-between space except those you create as you traverse it, the lay of the land being something you learn as you go.

Because it’s the middle where a story truly lives. The meandering space between the bookends that holds deserts and seas, stars and comets, cities that grow from villages, then crumble to ruins. Simple things are also found here, of course; pockets of stillness and solace in a turbulent world. Stretches of gentle terrain that lead you to gardens, libraries, festivals. Quaint bookshops in sleepy towns or a peaceful bakery with a flower box where the welcome sign should be. Tea shared with a friend in a quiet moment. Empathy shared with a stranger. It all depends on where you look, and how— the lens through which you examine this map. The souls who carefully draw the roads and plot the topography to chart this course.

Here between the bookends, there are two. Two angels who had far more beginnings than they should have. Then one angel and one demon who took a very long and unlikely path through the middle.

Since we need to start this story somewhere, let’s start at the beginning. The first one.

* * *

The first time God created the earth, it was something of a disaster. She’d had no teacher of Her own, and, fresh off the rush of creating several million angels, She was riding more than a little bit of a creative high. So She laid out some rough plans for creating stars and shaping the cosmos, handed them off to Her angels, then settled in to pursue Her own artistic endeavor.

The _problem_ with setting the stage for that first version of Earth, was that “setting the stage” is exactly what She did. She made a stage. A great flat thing that refused to thrive or evolve. Her angels had been diligently hanging the stars, and the new sun that shone on this stage did so in a harsh and constant way. The flat Earth didn’t rotate to ever show anything less than all of itself to the sun and, as a result, very quickly overheated.

_**Oh, this won’t do** , _She thought, and threw the whole thing in the bin.

The second time She created the earth, She observed Her angels and decided to take a leaf out of their book. The mind of an angel is a very logical and rigid thing, and they certainly seemed to have the _physics_ of the universe figured out. A cursory glance of the cosmos they were working on showed a strong preference for spheres.

_**Perhaps a sphere, then**. _

And so, the second version of Earth was a sphere. What She was not expecting was the panic and confusion this would cause among Her angels.

“The Almighty is making a _new_ Earth?”

“What was wrong with the first?”

“Why would She start over? Should _we_ start the stars over?”

“I thought She was infallible.”

“Is this our fault?”

“Have we upset Her in some way?”

_**Oh dear. I really didn’t give them much room for adaptation, did I?** _

She wiped the slate again, but this time She was careful to pluck the memory of Her scrapped project from the minds of Her angels. Questions, especially of the existential sort, did not seem like something they were equipped to deal with. _**Best not to confuse the poor things more than necessary**_.

The Earth passion project went through several more iterations in this manner before She started to get a feel for Her artistic vision. There was a sphere covered in dust and rocks that fell apart when She forgot to add gravity. After creating a world that was completely covered in dandelions (pretty, but ultimately very boring), She overcompensated by covering a planet in flora so fecund that it quickly entangled the surface in a chaotic snarl. There was a planet whose day and night cycle went as fast as breathing, followed by a planet that was locked in place, with one hemisphere always facing the sun and the other in constant darkness. None of these versions of Earth were anything She was happy with and each one eventually joined its fellows— a half-finished sketch abandoned on the cutting room floor.

All the while, Her angels went about their heavenly duties, blissfully unaware of the Almighty’s art block. Each time She wiped Her easel clean, She removed all existing memories of the abandoned Earth, preserving the knowledge of the cycles in Her mind alone.

Eventually, She began to find inspiration for her project. But as is often the case with inspiration, it came from a very unlikely source.

* * *

** The Earth Project: iteration 18 **

Aziraphale had wrapped up his work in the archives quicker than usual, eager to make his way to the main hall. There had been quite a buzz going around about the whole Earth project, and he had been scouring the records for any scrap of information about it, finding surprisingly little save some details on the local flora. According to the Archangels, the Almighty was encouraging any angel who wanted to explore Earth to do so, and Aziraphale had been excited to get down there and learn about Her latest creation firsthand.

He had seen the massive spherical map in the main hall, of course. It was impossible to miss, and quite the impressive feat of interactive engineering. There had never been time to stop and admire it thoroughly, but even in passing, the view was so _colorful_. The lack of color in Heaven isn’t something Aziraphale has ever really thought about, but now that he knows a place can be comprised of so much green and blue, the bright and ubiquitous whiteness of Heaven is suddenly all he can notice.

He is pondering the nature and merits of color as he turns the corner into the main hall. The room is empty, save for one other angel inspecting the globe. He isn’t anyone Aziraphale recognizes, but seeing as he is a rather bookish sort even among the other chroniclers, that isn’t necessarily surprising. The angel is his own splash of color against the achromatic thrum of the room, red curls spilling down his back in a wild tumble as he circles the Earth in a slow, anticlockwise circle. Aziraphale finds himself momentarily distracted by the sight, his pace slowing to match his thought process.

For a brief moment, he considers returning to the archives. It would be a simple thing— to turn back and find a menial task in the archives to complete, returning to the globe once this stranger has had a chance to make his way down to Earth. It’s not that Aziraphale is a friendless angel; he is exactly as social and friendly as he needs to be to get his work done and exist comfortably among his peers. It is simply that he doesn’t easily make conversation when it’s not required of him. He is a very _efficient_ angel, perfectly suited for his work as a chronicler. He watches the thought of avoiding the stranger pass through his head, somewhat overshadowed by the wonder and curiosity surrounding the Almighty’s new project, feeling his feet carry him forward as he thinks.

“Er— hello,” Aziraphale says when he finds himself at the globe, facing an unavoidable social exchange. The other angel acknowledges him with a nod and a distracted smile, continuing his slow examination of Earth’s likeness. “Taking up the Almighty’s suggestion to explore Earth, I take it?”

“Figured I’d see what all the fuss was about. It’s very _colorful,_ this new planet.”

“I suppose it is. You know, if I’m being perfectly honest, I’d never given much thought to color before now, but this really is quite lovely,” Aziraphale says, falling into his own slow orbit around the globe, rotating in the opposite direction to the other angel. Positioning the globe as a buffer between them bolsters his confidence somewhat. “What do you think it’s like down there?”

“Stars if I know. ‘S’why I’m here, isn’t it?” comes the casual reply from behind the globe. _Stars? Interesting expression._ “Baraqiel and Tamiel nipped down earlier, but didn’t have much to say about it. Not to me anyway. They seemed pretty keen to get back to work on their helix nebula.”

“You’re a starmaker then?” Aziraphale calls around the globe.

“Mmm. You could say that. Mostly been stuck working on moons though.”

“Oh! I was just reading about those!” Aziraphale says with excitement. Curiosity starting to overshadow shyness, he pops up on his toes and peers around the planet, suddenly eager to catch the stranger’s eye. As much as he loves his work in the archives, it does lack a certain amount of hands-on excitement. The thought of talking to someone who has actually _touched moons_ is suddenly thrilling. “Wonderful bit of innovation, moons.”

“If you say so. Just chunks of rock, really. Can’t hold a candle to the stars,” the stranger says, coming into view. He stops and crosses his arms, leaning forward to get a better look at one of the land masses.

Aziraphale’s orbit comes to rest next to him. He clasps his hands behind his back and follows the starmaker’s gaze down to Earth. His mind begins to drift toward the wonders being created across the cosmos, and it is with a dreamy sort of tone that he begins to speak again. “The stars are obviously stunning, but there’s something to be said for that which reflects them back. Your ‘chunks of rock’ have found a way to shine even though they can’t create light.”

The starmaker gives a delighted chuckle at this. His attention finally captured, he turns to look at Aziraphale, tilting his head curiously. “Huh. Well that’s very… poetic—” he pauses expectantly, letting one eyebrow creep up his forehead.

Aziraphale turns and locks eyes with him for the first time. He is distantly aware that this angel is asking for his name, but when he meets his gaze, Aziraphale feels his words catch in his throat.

The eyes staring back at him are unlike any he has ever seen. While it’s true that each angel’s eyes are unique, there is still not a huge amount of variation. You can find the usual spectrum of blue, grey, and brown, the occasional violet or green or hazel, but they all seem to be made from roughly the same base model. The angel currently studying Aziraphale has eyes of bright, molten gold, with pupils so pinprick-small, they seem almost non-existent at first glance; as though the blazing starlight he’s exposed to is so intense that his body had found a way to counteract it, shuttering its windows from harm. When the starmaker tilts his head, light catches his eyes in new ways, glinting off flecks of gold leaf and dark amber.

_Stars indeed…_

“A-Aziraphale,” he manages, maintaining most of his composure.

“Aziraphale.” The starmaker repeats it back slowly, like he’s testing the shape of the name. He stares back at Aziraphale, interest clinging to the edges of his crooked smile. “How do you know so much about moons and starlight anyway? I don’t recognize you as one of the starmakers.”

“Oh. No. Not a starmaker. I’m a chronicler. It’s my job to keep a record of the cosmos, among other things. You all are doing a marvelous job… er—”

“Joriel.”

“Joriel. Right. Simply marvelous.” Aziraphale tears his gaze away from Joriel, returning it to the globe in front of them. “So. Earth seems quite a bit larger this close up. Did you have a destination in mind?”

“Nope. I’m flying as blind as you are. Figured I’d just wing it.”

“Wing it?”

“Yeah, you know, just pick somewhere at random. Seems as good a way as any.” Joriel pauses, leaning back slightly to examine Aziraphale better. “You, uh… want to come?”

“I… Yes, I’d love to.” Aziraphale responds, surprising himself with the realization that he _would_ actually enjoy some company.

The lopsided smile on Joriel’s face spreads into a wider, more balanced grin. “Great!” he says, extending a hand.

The whole encounter is not at all what Aziraphale had expected. His experiences with other angels have always been short and to the point. Predictable. Some of the Archangels leave him downright uncomfortable. But there is something different about Joriel. He seems… carefree. Jovial, even. Quick to smile and laugh, and welcoming in a way Aziraphale finds absolutely foreign. Maybe it’s something to do with being a starmaker. Aziraphale had never talked to one before, what with how distant their departments are. Starmakers rarely seem to come down from the sky, and when they do, they hardly ever mingle with the other angels. But here was one now, smiling and extending a hand to Aziraphale so easily. He finds himself overwhelmed by the urge to take it.

_She did suggest we explore Earth for ourselves and there’s certainly nothing wrong with making a friend._

So Aziraphale smiles and reaches out to grasp Joriel by the forearm. “Ready then?” Joriel asks, gripping his arm in return. Aziraphale nods.

Maintaining eye contact, Joriel reaches his other arm out to the side and jabs at a random point on the globe.

There is a sensation like a rush of warm air against Aziraphale’s face as the two of them are dematerialized in Heaven and swiftly given physical form on the planet’s surface. It isn’t like falling, as he might have assumed. It doesn’t even feel like moving. One moment he is standing in the empty white expanse of Heaven’s main hall, the next he is simply… elsewhere. Somewhere bright and warm and colorful. There is light, but instead of the achromatic brilliance he has become accustomed to, it has a deep golden hue, adding a sense of depth to everything around them. They stand in a vast field of flowers, bursting in vibrant reds, oranges, and yellows and expanding as far as he can see in every direction. Joriel stands facing him, a firm link still between them where they hold each other’s forearms.

“Well that was easy,” Joriel says, squinting as he peers up at the sky. “I guess I expected a little more resistance. Atmospheres are tricky.”

Aziraphale loosens his grip on Joriel’s arm, disconnecting himself so that he can turn in a slow circle and take in the landscape around them.

Awe overwhelms him utterly. He tries to absorb the portrait he suddenly finds himself in the middle of, but for the first time in his existence, feels ill-equipped for the task at hand. Standing in a work of pure passion and beauty, crafted by Her hand, he feels as though he’s a part of something far larger than himself. It’s not the deep blue of the sky that stuns him, but the _vastness_ of it— the way it somehow seems more expansive than the cosmos when viewed from down here. The sun offers a soft quality to the light and a warmth to the air that he never would have thought possible. From where he stands in the field, he suddenly imagines himself as the exact center of everything; the ember heart of a fire from which the blooms at his feet blaze out to the horizons.

He closes his eyes and takes a moment to quiet his mind. Recenter himself. Concentrate. He allows a list of relevant facts and information about Earth—what little he could find in the archives—to run through his head, grounding himself with the names of flowers ( _tagetes patula: marigolds_ ), the composition of the atmosphere ( _78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen, 1% argon_ ), the stripped-down definition of sunlight ( _electromagnetic radiation: infrared, visible, ultraviolet_ ).

The awe remains, but calm slowly seeps in to join it.

When he opens his eyes again, he sees Joriel standing in front of him, eyebrow cocked once more, crooked smile back in place. He seems to fit so well here. Like he was painted from the same fiery pigments as the landscape around them. His strange eyes are fixed on Aziraphale with a look that is tinged with concern.

“You alright?” he asks.

Aziraphale stares for a few seconds before finding his voice. The colors, the light, the warmth, the _smell_ of this place have slowed down his reactions to the point where he feels like he’s trying to run underwater.

“Hmm? Oh. Yes. Perfectly."

"Because you look a little dazed."

"It's just… So colorful,” Aziraphale breathes. “It’s quite a _lot_."

The smile falls a bit, the concern lingering in Joriel’s eyes. "Wait, is this your first time on a planet?"

Aziraphale nods.

"Oh stars, I should have warned you,” Joriel says, shifting to stand beside him, a movement that feels like he’s positioning himself to catch Aziraphale if needed. “Okay, so, down here? Your senses will be heightened. Planets are far more _tactile_ than what you’re used to. It's not that you don't _have_ physical senses in Heaven, it's just that you don't _need_ them. Smell and taste particularly."

"Taste? Why taste?" Aziraphale asks. He is aware of the fifth sense of course, he had always just considered it a bit useless.

"Uh, yeah. It's hard to explain, but you’ll probably find you’re more sensitive to it while you’re planetside. It kind of goes hand-in-hand with smell.” Joriel says, furrowing his brow. “Actually. It might help ease you into things...” He cranes his neck to peer around the field. “You okay if I look around?” he gestures vaguely at the landscape with one hand.

“Quite. I think I’d just like to admire it all for a moment anyway,” Aziraphale says. It’s the truth, but only part of it. He doesn’t mention how it feels like his feet have put down roots and he’s not sure he could move from this spot if he tried.

Joriel flashes him a smile and starts picking his way through the flowers. He stoops down a few times to pick pebbles off the ground and examine them before tentatively touching them to his tongue. Aziraphale watches him with growing amusement as he makes a disgruntled sound at each rock and tosses it aside. It takes his mind a few beats to catch up and realize that Joriel is searching for an example of taste. Something he can share with Aziraphale.

Still observing from within his sensory daze, Aziraphale’s mind hovers briefly on the fact that his wonderment was not met with cold confusion or impatience. He was not told to snap out of it. His unusual new companion didn’t just accept his reverence in stride, he joined him in it.

_What a curious thing,_ Aziraphale thinks, as he observes the angel who is unlike any he’s met before.

“Why not the marigolds?” he calls, after watching Joriel taste what appears to be a particularly unappetizing pebble.

“The what?”

“The flowers. Marigolds.”

“Wait.” Joriel stands and turns to look at Aziraphale. “You know enough about this place to know the names of the local flora, but you weren’t prepared for color?”

“It’s one thing to read about it. It’s quite another to actually experience it,” Aziraphale says, crouching down among the flowers. Joriel retraces his path and kneels down beside him. “Honestly though, we’re standing in a veritable sea of marigolds and the first thing you think to reach for is a rock?” He extends a hand and brushes his fingers against the frilled petals of a bright orange flower, finding them far softer than he expected.

“They’re alive, aren’t they?” Joriel huffs defensively. “I don’t think I’d like it very much if some angel swooped down and yanked my roots out of the ground.”

Aziraphale smiles at this sentimentality. “They’re alive, yes. But it’s a different kind of life. They don’t feel pain.” He gently plucks a petal from the marigold and holds it out to Joriel. “Here. Just a petal. Its roots are fine.”

The suggestion of a frown flickers across Joriel’s face. “But how can you know that?” he asks, accepting the petal.

“I’m a chronicler,” Aziraphale says confidently. “The job comes with direct access to all information regarding everything in the cosmos, straight from the Almighty.”

Joriel narrows his eyes suspiciously. Looking down at the flower, he asks, “And what do _you_ have to say about it?”

“Joriel, it’s… a plant.”

He shrugs and drags his eyes back up to Aziraphale. There is an emotion in his voice that Aziraphale can’t quite place when he says, “Just in case.” Then the easy smile slides back onto his face as he turns his attention to the petal in his hand. In a fluid movement, he raises his hand and places it on the tip of his tongue. After a brief consideration, his eyes light up. “Oh! Yes, that. You should try one. It’s weird, but… good weird.”

Aziraphale feels himself exiting his daze, his head finally catching up with the moment. He thinks he should feel more trepidation around this strange starmaker that he’s known all of ten minutes. Falling into easy banter and company isn’t something he can recall happening with any other angels. There is friendliness and intellectual conversation among his colleagues, certainly. At the very least, there is politeness and respect. But camaraderie? Having a casual chat with a flower and licking rocks as though it were the most normal thing in the cosmos? This is new. This is strange. Fun. He reaches out to pluck his own petal from the flower at his feet, leaving his reservations behind him.

Following Joriel’s lead, he places the petal on his tongue. It’s a subtle thing, the tingling bloom of sensation through his mouth. He immediately understands why Joriel compared it to the sense of smell, and realizes how impossible it is to describe to anyone who hasn’t experienced taste. Aziraphale likens the flavor to the color orange, a thought which feels utterly ridiculous as it passes through his mind, but somehow makes perfect sense at the same time. It’s a quiet perfume on his tongue at first, before budding into something vaguely sharp and warm.

His eyes go wide and snap to Joriel, holding his amused gaze with an intense focus as the taste of marigold dissolves into a memory.

“Well?” Joriel asks. “Taste is wild, right?”

Aziraphale nods, breathless. He finds himself grasping for a way to describe the alien experience. “It’s… prickly? No, that’s not right. Soft, maybe? Warm? How in Heaven’s name am I supposed to put this down in the books?”

“Prickly seems right, just go with that,” Joriel says with a laugh. “Do you really need to put an entry in the library for all the things you taste while you're on Earth?”

“It's new information and I'm a chronicler,” Aziraphale says, feeling like he's stating the obvious. _Starmakers really are a strange lot._

Joriel stands, brushing the dirt from his knees. “Well then, chronicler Aziraphale,” he says. He extends a hand and helps Aziraphale to his feet. “Would you like to go for a walk and see what other _new information_ we can find?”

Aziraphale smiles and nods, falls into step beside Joriel, but finds himself unable to formulate an intelligent response. All his senses feel overtaxed somehow, and settling into such quick companionship with Joriel has managed to throw him even further off balance. He loves his work in the archives, of course. He loves learning and giving information permanence. Making sure everything has its proper place in the records fills him with absolute fulfillment, but what he’s feeling now is something slightly different from that. It’s a deeper kind of curiosity, closer to precociousness, and it radiates off of Joriel like sunlight. It’s strange and new, but also warm and nourishing. Aziraphale is utterly fascinated. He wants to know _everything_.

As they walk, Aziraphale mentally takes what notes he can, but soon finds himself doing it more for the enjoyment of Joriel’s reaction than for the sake of being a chronicler.

His notes on marigolds are met with a bright laugh and the given footnote: ‘ _bright and smelly, tastes prickly,_ ’ _is what you should put in the books, chronicler_.

When he remarks on the clouds, the response from beside him is: _a weird, white nebula made out of water_ followed by a grin and a shrug.

By the time he brings up the sun, it is solely to hear Joriel’s input of: _oh, okay so, Sol? Looks and feels great from this distance and all, but what you_ can’t _tell from down here is what it_ sounds _like. Constantly singing, Earth’s star._

Aziraphale takes these chaotic answers in, offering a bewildered smile in exchange. While the chronicler in him tries to puzzle out a way to record the taste of flowers and the sound of the sun, he allows the rest of him to simply enjoy the unexpected delight of having a friend.

* * *

From somewhere outside the cosmos, God watched the two angels carve their unscripted path through a field of marigolds. Her attention had been piqued early; the creative starmakers rarely mixed with anyone outside their department, least of all the highly analytical bunch that was the chroniclers. But Aziraphale and Joriel seemed to click instantly, their quick rapport holding Her rapt attention for the entirety of their trip to Earth. And again, when they met for a return trip. And every visit after that.

She watched them with growing interest as they began frequenting the night side of the planet at Joriel’s suggestion, in order to see the stars through the lens of Earth’s atmosphere. The physical distance somehow made the stars feel _real_ to Aziraphale in a way they never could when considered from Heaven. Joriel would tell Aziraphale stories about asteroids and moons he had made, the inner workings of nebulae, the names of stars and planets light years away. She watched the stars reflect in Aziraphale’s eyes while he listed to these stories, his expression a mask of wonder. She had made him to be a keeper and teller of information, but when he turned his face to the night sky and relaxed into Joriel’s words, he seemed to become something else. A creature utterly enchanted by being on the listener’s side of a tale for the first time.

It was the starlight reflecting in Aziraphale’s eyes she was thinking of when, the next time She reset the balance and remade Earth, She decided to give it a moon.


	2. The mind forgets

** The Earth Project: iteration 19 **

Joriel’s footsteps echo through the bright and cavernous corridors of Heaven. It’s a stark contrast from the chaos and the soft hum of the cosmos that he’s become accustomed to, but he supposes it’s for the best that he gets his head out of the stardust from time to time. The Almighty’s open invitation to explore Her mysterious new planet had seemed like the perfect opportunity to get some solid ground under his feet once more.

He rounds the corner into the main hall and takes in the globe for the first time, slowing his pace a bit to admire it from afar. Baraqiel hadn’t been kidding about how _colorful_ it was, the bright blues and greens especially shocking against the glaring white backdrop of Heaven. Jupiter’s neutral palette had become such a common view for him that he had forgotten just what planets could be capable of. Lush greenery, an oxygen-rich atmosphere, deep oceans. Life— the one thing the starmakers had not been given a green light to create. A bubble of excitement builds in him at the thought of delving into a _living planet_ for the first time.

As he nears the globe, another angel circles around from behind it. He’s no one Joriel recognizes. Pale features blend into bright walls around him as he examines the planet, hands clasped firmly behind his back. He paces slowly, occasionally leaning in with a frown before straightening and resuming his careful inspection.

Joriel watches him curiously for a moment, wondering how anyone could be so focused on any task that he wouldn’t notice another person’s approach.

“Planning your trip to the Lord’s new playground?” he pipes up, when the oblivious stranger starts to circle around the back of the globe again.

The pale angel looks up with a start, turning over his shoulder to stare at Joriel with wide blue eyes.

“Er. I— sorry, what?” he bumbles before giving his head a little shake and looking between the globe and Joriel a few times. “Erm, yes. I suppose I am.”

Joriel feels a strange flutter of some undefinable emotion in him as he watches the other angel trip over his words - amusement? Comfort? Or perhaps he is just charmed enough to want such familiarity. He crosses his arms casually and suppresses a small smile.

“I’m sorry, have we met?” the stranger asks, his brow furrowing slightly.

“Not likely,” Joriel says. _Stars, I could ask you the same though._ “I’ve been tied up making satellites for Jupiter for what feels like an eternity.” A small flicker of recognition lights in the stranger’s wide blue stare.

“Oh! Jupiter’s moons!” he says. “There’s been such a buzz about those going around the archives. Zophiel was so _delighted_ by them.”

Joriel breaks into a grin and laughs at the thought of delighting a room full of chroniclers. “I suppose they are a bit _showy_ for moons. You’re a chronicler then?”

“Aziraphale,” He says with a nod, the small inquisitive frown making another pass across his face.

“Joriel, moon architect.”

“They really are wonderful,” Aziraphale says earnestly. “Volcanoes on a moon! Such a strange idea, but it turned out so beautifully. Almost like a star in miniature.”

 _A star in miniature?_ Joriel raises an eyebrow. “Ah. Well. Gotta keep myself entertained somehow. I’m pretty sure I chafed Samyaza somehow. They’ve had me on moon duty for ages.”

Aziraphale blinks. “Chafed.”

“Yeah. Rubbed them wrong. Annoyed. Doesn’t matter,” he adds when Aziraphale’s confused stare doesn’t budge. “If I’m doomed to be a starmaker forever making moons, I can at least find a way to make them as interesting as possible.”

“Did you have anything to do with this one?” Aziraphale asks, pointing at the small grey moon in Earth’s orbit.

“Nah, that one’s all Her,” Joriel responds, taking a few steps forward to get a closer peer into the pockmarked face of Earth’s moon “It looks a bit drab from up here, but Baraqiel says it’s as bright as a star if you look at it from the surface.”

“Well it is a mirror for starlight. I imagine it’s quite the beacon being this close to the planet.”

The almost-familiar charm rustles in Joriel again and he laughs softly. He’s never met a chronicler before, but from everything he’s heard, he had pictured them as stuffy recluses, worried about assigning scientific facts to the world around them. Bookkeepers, ever missing the forest for the trees. This stranger sighing over volcanic moons and waxing poetic about reflected starlight is a surprise, to say the least.

“You seem to know a lot about my job for a librarian,” he says, turning his attention from the moon to Aziraphale.

“That’s rather the point, I would think. I observe and record and there’s quite a lot of both to be done.”

“Ah. Guilty.” Joriel jerks a thumb at the globe. “Have you got a destination in mind?”

Aziraphale’s face falls a little. “I’m afraid I don’t even know where to start. Earth is the one thing the library doesn’t have extensive records on.”

“ _That’s rather the point, I would think_ ,” Joriel says with a wily smile, dipping into Aziraphale’s accent as best he can. “It’s about exploration, from what I understand. Seeing how outside influences—that’s us—interact with Her creation.”

He would have expected a chronicler to bristle with annoyance at being teased, but Aziraphale simply gives a good-natured laugh and says, “That’s a very _scientific_ way to approach it. And here I thought you were a starmaker. All chaos and color and moons that explode.”

Joriel gasps dramatically and lets one hand fly to his chest. “You wound me, chronicler Aziraphale. I happen to contain _multitudes._ ”

It’s startling how naturally they slip into the comfortable exchange, laughing and trading friendly gibes. For the life of him, Joriel can’t figure out _why_. He rarely has any interactions with his colleagues that run deeper than a handful of polite words, but suddenly he’s joking with a _chronicler_ as though they were old friends.

“Well, since you seem so enamored with moons, would you like to observe Earth’s from the surface? See if it really is a beacon?” Joriel asks. He lines up a patch of green with the moon’s position above the planet. “If we enter here, there should be a decent view.”

“Oh! I-” Aziraphale stammers. In the second of silence that follows, Joriel’s mind hovers briefly on the realization that inviting him to Earth was less a decision and more an instinct that he followed. “Yes. I’d love to.”

“Great!” Joriel says brightly, extending a hand, the other still poised above the spot on the globe. Without further bumbling, Aziraphale reaches out and grips him by the forearm. The link between them established, Joriel lets his finger connect with the map.

It only takes a few seconds and a brief shift of air before the two of them are transported to the planet’s surface. It’s a much smoother entry than Joriel is used to, but he supposes that’s what one gets when interacting with the Almighty’s pet project.

Aziraphale’s hand slides away once their feet hit solid ground and Joriel can see him turning his head in every direction, taking in their surroundings. The clearing they find themselves in is small, walled in by dense pine trees on three sides, a full moon hanging above them in a star-strewn sky. Streams of pale moonlight filter through the trees around them, casting soft grey shadows across the grass. A gentle breeze whispers around them, carrying a startlingly sweet perfume with it.

“Oh wow,” Joriel says, inhaling deeply through his nose. “ _That’s_ new.”

Aziraphale’s gaze had drifted to the moon and he shakes himself out of a daze at the sound of Joriel’s voice. “Pardon?”

“That _smell_.” Joriel walks toward the treeline and begins searching for the source of it. “Never smelled anything like it.”

He hears Aziraphale take a breath behind him.

“There must be flowers nearby. A bit unexpected to be honest, here in the middle of the night, but not unheard of.”

“Well by your own ‘reflected starlight’ definition, there’s a lot of residual daylight shining down on us right now,” Joriel says, waving a hand vaguely at the moon.

“I suppose I hadn’t thought of it that way.” Aziraphale’s voice is suddenly soft and fanciful, and Joriel glances over to see him smiling dreamily at the moon. He lets his gaze linger for a moment on Aziraphale, wondering at the rapid shifts in him from chronicler to dreamer, before returning to searching the undergrowth wearing a smile of his own.

He follows the source of the floral perfume to the base of a large tree. A cluster of shrubbery tangled at its base, reaching slim fingers up its trunk. Dotted among the green are delicate white flowers, shaped vaguely like stars. He leans close enough to breathe in their smell, the heady aroma dominating his senses for the duration of the breath.

Figuring a chronicler would want to inspect Earth’s flora, he turns back to where Aziraphale still stands in the clearing. Instead of gazing up at the moon, however, he is staring intently at Joriel, watching him with that strange, curious frown on his face again. It drops quickly when Joriel catches his eye, a wary smile moving in to replace it.

“I found them,” Joriel says, leaning against the tree and pointing at the flowers.

Aziraphale follows him to the tree, a look of delighted recognition dawning on him when he inspects the vines. “Ah! Jasmine!”

“Do all chroniclers know everything about everything?” Joriel asks with a laugh. It doesn’t necessarily surprise him, but he does find it an amusing contrast to the starmakers.

“Well, we remember what we read, certainly, and I read everything I could about Earth before coming here,” Aziraphale says, leaning in to smell the jasmine. “At this point, that mostly just means the plant life.”

“Did the books say anything about how it would smell?”

Aziraphale holds the floral breath for a moment and shakes his head slowly. “I’m not sure how this could possibly be put into words on a page.”

“And that doesn’t… trouble you?” Joriel asks, arching an eyebrow.

Aziraphale simply sighs and settles himself into a sitting position against the tree, framed by fragrant earthbound stars and colored by the silver hues of the moonlight. He leans his head back against the trunk and resumes his dreamy staring contest with the moon. “There’s a lot that I don’t think can really be captured in words. Words give us a starting point, but it’s up to the mind to take them further.”

Joriel reaches for some witty response to this, a playful retort to exchange with his confusing new acquaintance, but finds nothing. Instead, he leans against the tree and stares at Aziraphale, revising all his assumptions about chroniclers.

“A beacon indeed,” Aziraphale eventually murmurs, gently breaking the silence. “You really made eighty of these for Jupiter?”

“Ah, well. Only about eight of them are really noteworthy.” _But surely you know that, chronicler._ He stares up at the starry canvas above them. “The rest are just sort of… debris.”

“Eight! All of them this big?”

 _Facts? He can’t seriously be asking me for facts._ “A few of them are bigger actually. Ganymede ended up being even bigger than Mercury.”

“Moons the size of planets,” Aziraphale breathes, never lowering his eyes from the sky. “Truly amazing.”

“Oh, I’m not sure if Jupiter is a good metric,” Joriel says. _Perhaps stories then?_ “I definitely got carried away with some of its satellites. I’m just so tired of making moons and asteroids. I guess I kind of figured if I got really _flashy and dramatic_ with this assignment, I might finally get upgraded to stars.” He pulls his hands through the complicated star sculpting gesture he had used when shaping Io; a slow, fluid motion of the arm accompanied by a more agile quirking of his fingers. The pantomime manages to pull Aziraphale’s attention away from the sky and he watches with a bemused expression. Knocked slightly off center by the sudden spotlight, Joriel drops the movement with a shrug. “At the very least, I figured I’d be entertained.”

There is the faintest flicker of a smile across Aziraphale’s face. “I don’t see how roaming the cosmos making new heavenly bodies could possibly be tiresome.”

“One finds ways to keep it interesting.”

“Oh?”

With another inward laugh, Joriel commits to the role of storyteller.

“Io, right? The flashy and dramatic one?” He lowers himself to sit beside Aziraphale as he talks, adding his splash of red and gold to the jasmine-framed portrait of silver and blue. “She tends to steal the spotlight from her brothers and sisters, but she’s by no means the only darling I put up there. And Ganymede isn’t just some ‘bigger than Mercury’ rock. It’s actually got _secret oceans_.”

“Secret oceans.” Aziraphale smiles and leans back against the tree, letting his eyes slip shut.

“Yep. Massive seas, two hundred kilometers beneath the surface. I buried all kinds of treasures on those moons, but the _secret oceans_ are a personal favorite. Starmakers don’t have the go-ahead to create _life_ , but I sure did make sure the conditions were there for it. There’s this trick, you see, when you sculpt a new heavenly body, where if you drag your fingers through the clay _just so_ ,” he recreates the fluid hand movement from before, his fingers drifting and dancing through the air like a harpist. He smiles as he moves, letting himself get carried away in his own telling. “You can leave behind traces of carbon and nitrogen and oxygen and sort of, you know… set the stage for life.”

“Starmakers,” Aziraphale says with an incredulous shake of his head. “What other, er— ‘treasures’ did you hide up there?”

“Oh, _loads_ ,” Joriel grins mischievously, deciding to test Aziraphale a bit now that he has his attention. “But surely you already know about them. Being a chronicler and all.”

“I know the facts, yes. But nothing of the _artistry_.” Aziraphale attempts to mimic the complicated hand gesture, sending a pang of endearment ringing through Joriel.

“Right then,” he says, doing his best to swallow a laugh. “Artistry and buried treasure. Well… Europa was a fun one. Its surface is sort of the opposite of Io - smooth as glass and entirely wrapped up in water and ice. But underneath the calm surface? A nonsensical system of caves and tunnels. Some of them lead to the surface, but others are completely cut off and wind around in this crazy labyrinth.”

Aziraphale tilts his head to one side, wearing an expression that is equal parts confused and charmed. “Whatever for?”

“I dunno. Fun? Mostly it was just fun tying up the insides of a moon in knots.” Joriel leans his head back against the tree and stares up at the sky. “Anyway. I think Callisto ended up being my favorite. I mean, sure, Io is explosive and flashy, Ganymede has the _secret oceans_ trick up his sleeve, Europa’s guts are a ridiculous tangle, but Callisto? That freckled beauty is practically her own planet. She’s got an atmosphere and everything. I put her just far enough away from Jupiter that radiation won’t be a terrible bother for future life, then I left her with oceans and the potential for flora and fauna.” Joriel feels his imagination drifting back up to the heavens as he speaks, carried away on his own story.

“You found a loophole,” Aziraphale grins.

“I what now?”

“A loophole. You’re a _star_ maker tasked with making _moons_ , and somehow you’ve turned it into a way to make _oceans_.”

“Ah. Right. Guess I hadn’t thought of it that way,” Joriel says. “I’m not breaking any _rules_ or anything. I’m just… I don’t know. Trying to make the cosmos a little more _engaging_.”

“Goodness, no, not breaking any rules! Just finding the edges of them.”

 _Always analyzing,_ _even when he’s dreaming_ , Joriel thinks, smiling up at expanse of sky above them. “Chroniclers,” he huffs softly, looking at Aziraphale out of the corner of his eye.

“It does seem somehow fitting though.” Aziraphale muses. “Oceans and moons, I mean. They make a certain amount of intuitive sense together.”

“Huh. Good eye,” Joriel says, caught off guard by the very artistic observation. “I’ve always thought of them as complementary colors. If that makes sense.”

Aziraphale simply nods and hums out a sigh, a sound that tugs at the edges of Joriel’s heart in a startling way. It’s a nebulous feeling that he can’t quite pin down. A familiar sensation which, the more he tries to capture it with words, the further it drifts from his grasp.

Ultimately, what he feels is comfort. Unexpected, yes, but not unwelcome. And unable to define it any better than that, Joriel simply leans into it. He presses his back to the tree behind him and breathes the sweetened air. Aziraphale beside him is a soothing presence, a contradiction to everything he had assumed about chroniclers, but a welcome one. As the two of them sit on the surface of a strange new planet, in an easy silence and shared appreciation of the moon, Joriel abandons his attempts to put words to the feeling.

As easily as falling asleep, he lets the quandary drift out to sea and be forgotten.

* * *

_**Well,**_ God thought, watching the interaction from Her vantage point with great interest. _**These two again? Interesting.**_

She watched them as they admired the moon and spoke in terms of light years and stardust, seeming to pick up exactly where they left off. Which of course, should have been impossible. The moonlight shone through Aziraphale’s pale hair as though it belonged there. And perhaps it did. Perhaps She had made it in his image without meaning to.

When they began to speak of moons and seas as complementary colors, She found herself turning their awe and wonder over in Her mind. She felt out the edges of this unexpected bout of imagination, letting Herself be carried away by thoughts of a chronicler who reflected the moon and a starmaker who had found a way to create oceans. She was too fascinated to linger on the implications of these two finding each other again. Too charmed to consider the possibility that they could be growing and changing. Plans for the next version of Earth were already unfolding in Her head, and She allowed them to draw Her attention away from the two angels and their unlikely relationship.

And so, when She eventually cleared Her workspace and began a new Earth, She created tides that ebbed and flowed, and tied their movements to the moon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter now has some gorgeous fanart! Check it out over [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/617889066270310400/show-chapter-archive)!


	3. The soul remembers

**The Earth Project: iteration 20**

Aziraphale circles the globe, staring intensely into the strange and colorful scene before him. He had spent some time in the archives before he came here, leafing through what information he could find about Earth, but there had been precious little. Most of what he could find had been generic information about carbon-based flora and fauna that applied to all current life in the cosmos. Helpful, yes, but not necessarily for his purposes. He had been hoping for _direction._

He lets out a little sigh and seeks comfort in the thought that if he had needed the information, She would have provided it. Surely there is a reason She suggested the angels explore Earth for themselves instead, and it’s not his place to question it.

Aziraphale is examining what he assumes to be a mountain range and musing on the merits of ineffability when a faint floral taste prickles gently through his mouth. He stops and frowns in confusion at the foreign sensation. Taste had always seemed like the most pointless of the physical senses to him, especially given how closely related it was to smell. It’s certainly not useful in Heaven, although reports from starmakers had made it sound like there could be potential uses for it elsewhere. Figuring the sensation is just some strange reaction to the Almighty’s project, Aziraphale shrugs it off. He resumes his orbit, the floral taste eventually fading.

_I’m really just supposed to choose at random then? That seems so… foolhardy._

He’s almost worked up the courage to poke his finger at a random spot on the globe when the floral taste returns. Examining the map, he sees that he’s circled back to the same mountain range he had been examining before. He tilts his head to one side and leans in closer to stare. It looks like a perfectly normal mountain range as far as he can tell, but as he turns his full focus to it, the taste grows stronger. It rises to his nose, taking on a sharp scent as it lingers there.

Letting his curiosity guide his decision, Aziraphale reaches out and gently touches the mountain range with one finger. There’s a soft rush of air and a sensation of being lifted, and a few seamless seconds later he finds himself someplace entirely new.

He stands on a high hillside, looking out over a lush green valley. A densely forested mountain range stretches out around and above him, its various peaks disappearing into the clouds. The air is cool and crisp, carrying the clean scent of the forest on the breeze. His senses are momentarily flooded by the new setting, distracting him from the sharp flavor still blooming through his mouth.

“Uh. Hi,” comes a cautious voice from behind him.

Aziraphale turns with a start. Another angel is sitting in the grass behind him, leaning back on his palms and studying Aziraphale with shrewd golden eyes.

“Er. Hello?” Aziraphale puffs, smiling nervously.

The stranger breathes deeply through his nose and blinks in confusion, a slight frown settling on his face. He opens his mouth as if to speak, but lets it hang slightly open as he seems to lose his train of thought. The sourceless taste of flowers fades and slips away.

Aziraphale’s mind churns as they stare at each other, trying to figure out the _how_ and the _where_ and the _who_ of the whole situation. The other angel seems familiar somehow, and he wonders briefly if he’s a fellow chronicler. That might explain the _how_ and the _where_ — he could have easily overheard a colleague talking about their trip to Earth’s mountains and subconsciously have followed. But the thought is immediately dismissed when he gets to the _who._ He’s quite certain he knows all the other chroniclers well enough to at least recognize them. Perhaps an Archangel? But no, he would recognize all of them as well— any angel would.

A starmaker, then? That might explain the strange eyes, but it wouldn’t explain the nagging familiarity. He is confident he’s never met a starmaker in person.

Aziraphale frowns and pushes back against the confusion. “I’m sorry, have we met?” he asks, breaking the silence.

“Stars, I was about to ask you the same thing,” the stranger breathes, sounding a little relieved. “You’re not a starmaker, are you?”

“Chronicler,” Aziraphale says.

“Huh. I guess it’s not likely then. I don’t get away from the stars much. Must have seen you around though. You seem bloody familiar.”

“Indeed,” Aziraphale says. “Want some… erm. Company?” he asks tentatively.

The starmaker gestures at the ground next to him. “Please.”

“I’m Aziraphale, by the way,” he says as he tucks his feet under him and settles into a cross-legged position.

“Hello, Aziraphale. Bit weird that you chose this _exact spot_ for your landing.”

“Er, right. Sorry about that.” _Not as ‘weird’ as following my nose here._

“Not a complaint! I’ve always wanted to meet a chronicler. You’re all very _mysterious_.”

“I could say the same about you,” Aziraphale says, looking sideways at the starmaker.

“Nature of the job, I suppose.” With an easy shrug, he reclines even farther, propping himself up on both elbows. “I’m Joriel.”

The name clicks in Aziraphale’s mind instantly. “Oh! I heard about you when I was putting Jupiter in the books! Everyone in the archives was very impressed by Io. The volcanoes really are breathtaking.”

Joriel laughs, a warm smile spreading across his face, and Aziraphale’s attention is drawn once more to the taste of flowers prickling across his tongue.

“Ah, Io,” Joriel says dreamily. “I had fun with that one. Pretty sure that explosive little number was what finally convinced Samyaza to take me off moon duty.”

“Oh? What have they got you making now?”

Joriel’s eyes fill with a distracted kind of happiness as they drift towards the sky. An unashamed delight, completely unmasked and laid out for anyone to observe. The amount of openness in the expression throws Aziraphale off his emotional center; for someone he’s only just met, he’s shocked at how easy he finds Joriel to read in this moment. Or perhaps it’s just the sheer emotional candor that throws him. The bloom in his mouth flares dramatically and he stares at Joriel, his attention completely captured in the span of a few seconds.

“Stars! Finally stars. For everything the cosmos has to offer, there’s still nothing that can compare to stars. Did you know,” he says, bringing his eyes down to focus on Aziraphale with a gleeful sort of intensity. “That you can _taste_ stardust when you bring a new star into existence?”

“Taste?” Aziraphale says, a bit too loudly. “Um, no, that bit seems to get left out of the official descriptions.”

“Well you can! Right at the back of your throat. It’s kind of cool and sweet. A little bit tingly.”

“Do they all, er… taste the same?”

“Oh. I don’t actually know, I’ve only done the one so far. Well two, kind of. I worked on Alpha Centauri as a trial run and we ended up making it a binary star. One would think binary stars taste different from normal stars, but I guess you never know.”

“‘Ended up?’ You mean starmakers don’t plan these things?”

“Sure we do, to a certain extent,” Joriel says, amusement dancing in his eyes. “But you can’t plan _all_ of it. Starmaking is an art. Sometimes you just have to start whistling and see where the sounds take you.”

“But… Things could go wrong,” Aziraphale stammers, thinking of the logical order of the archives.

“Yeah, maybe!” Joriel laughs in return. “That’s half the fun though! Stars, if you could see some of the things Baraqiel cocked up in the Pegasus Galaxy. There’s this asteroid field over there that they absolutely _intended_ to be a new planetary system, but they _coughed_ in the middle of singing the star, and— well. You can imagine how well that went.”

The taste of flowers is heady and almost overpowering as Aziraphale watches the delight in Joriel’s eyes momentarily carry him away. Slowly, he drifts back down to Earth, bringing a lopsided grin with him. An incredulous smile finds its way to Aziraphale’s face. He shakes his head and lets out a puff of laughter.

“Whistling and singing and artistry,” Aziraphale says, allowing himself to relax a little, leaning back on one hand. “I don’t think I realized just how different a starmaker’s job is from a chronicler’s.”

“I don’t know about that. We both put information into the universe. You write it down, while we use our voices.”

“I suppose,” Aziraphale says, tilting his head back to gaze up at the clouds. “You know, all we have on the books is _what_ the starmakers are making up there. I know nothing of the _how_. I certainly never would have guessed _whistling_.”

“Oh? And how you did you think the stars got made?”

“I… never really questioned it, if I’m being honest.”

“All that time you were putting them in the books, you never once wondered?”

Aziraphale shakes his head. The truth is, he _hadn’t_ wondered. He had taken in the facts, appreciated them, written about stars and moons and galaxies in great detail, noted their creators, and then he had moved on. As a chronicler, that was exactly what he had been designed to do, but sitting here with an actual starmaker, he finds himself curious. For the first time, he wants to ask questions and know _more_ than what he’s been handed.

It frightens him a little.

“So, er— how does it work?” he asks cautiously. Seeking new information surely falls within his role as a chronicler, and if this is something that can go in the books then it can’t be _that_ frightening.

Joriel grins in response and scratches the back of his head. “Well, I don’t know the _science_ behind it, but I can tell you that when you’re up there,” he points toward the sky, “things operate differently than they do in the main office. Every sound and movement you make affects creation somehow. You can whistle or sing or hum, and the sound crystallizes into a star, the tone and pitch setting the size and intensity.”

“And that’s the part that has a taste?” Aziraphale asks, wondering at the persistent floral tingle in his own mouth. He wonders if stardust tastes in any way similar. If all starmakers have a floral ghost attached to their smiles.

“It’s sort of like an aftertaste, but yeah,” Joriel says with a nod. “You whistle out the star, and whatever ethereal dimension it comes out of leaves behind a little shadow of itself in you.”

Aziraphale smiles at the dramatic image and brings his stare down from the sky and fixing it on Joriel. “Can you teach me?” he asks, not giving himself enough time to consider the question too deeply.

“Wha- To _make stars_?”

“Of course not!” Aziraphale laughs. “Can you teach me to _whistle_?”

There is a long pause in which Joriel stares open-mouthed, the sunlight catching in the rich gold of his eyes and refracting like stars. Aziraphale holds his gaze and smiles serenely, feeling a rustle of satisfaction in managing to surprise a starmaker. When Joriel’s stunned exterior finally cracks, it is with a clear, bright laugh that fills Aziraphale’s mouth with the taste of flowers.

“Chroniclers,” he says with a shake of his head. “Yeah, alright. I can teach you to whistle…”

* * *

They hadn’t even met at the globe this time. Of all the billions of locations on the planet Aziraphale could have chosen, he had managed to locate Joriel without even realizing what he was doing. God wondered briefly if She had left behind any trace of a memory in their minds, but knew that She hadn’t. She was confident in that.

_**They’re changing then? Evolving?** _

This worried her. When She created angels, She had made a very careful point to make them resolute. Absolutely unwavering. The thought of what might happen if an angel pushed back—what it would do to them if they actually tried to _change_ —was a troubling one to say the least. _**All the more reason to wipe the slate on this one perhaps. Nip whatever this anomaly is right in the bud.**_

But She didn’t. Not right away. There was something about the interaction between Aziraphale and Joriel on the mountainside that stuck in Her mind. When the two of them met for future trips down to the planet, She watched as Joriel continued the impossible task of trying to teach Aziraphale to whistle. He was absolutely terrible at it, but his continued attempts brought genuine delight to Joriel, and he would react with fond smiles and deep bouts of laughter. It was when they were exploring a forest full of dusky golden light that he suggested humming instead, seeming to finally take pity on his charge. _“It’s another method of starmaking after all,”_ He had said. _“Humming can work just as well._ Better _even, if you’ve got your hands in a nebula.”_

The rest of the trip was full of Joriel whistling and Aziraphale humming and both of them laughing. It was when they began singing that She realized what it was She had been looking for.

It was two angels improvising a joyful sort of music that She was thinking of when She cleared Her workspace and added new materials to Her palette. Resculpting Earth with a deft hand, She wove birdsong and chirping crickets through the air, instilled whales and their music into the seas, and painted babbling brooks and rushing waterfalls across the land.


	4. Restlessness and wake up calls

_“Home is where one starts from. As we grow older_  
_The world becomes stranger, the pattern more complicated_  
_Of dead and living. Not the intense moment_  
_Isolated, with no before and after,_  
_But a lifetime burning in every moment”_

-T.S. Eliot, “East Coker”

Consider, if you would, an apple.

Picture an apple, any kind of apple you like, really, and tell me a story about it.

It would be tempting to look at this apple and tell a simple tale that starts with a tree. But why not begin with a seed instead? And what of the gardener that planted and tended it? Or perhaps the story of this apple is actually a story about the soil its tree grows in. The orchard that surrounds it. The rain and the sunlight that slowly fed it. The infinite number of factors that fell into place _just so_ in order for this apple to exist exactly as it does now.

Where does a story truly begin? How far back do we need to go in order to _understand_ a story? And where does one possibly look when there are too many beginnings? When the tree branches endlessly and the gardener is no longer taking calls?

I suppose, for now, this final beginning will do.

* * *

** The Earth Project: iteration 23, rather more than seven days into it **

Aziraphale tries not to stare as the figure next to him becomes vaguely human-shaped, but when the dark wings flare out, his eyes dart over them involuntarily. Sunlight catches the black feathers and shines back with a faint iridescence. A tumble of dramatic red curls falls between them, a fiery crash into an oil slick.

Aziraphale shakes himself from his trance as he realizes the figure next to him is one of the fallen, and that he has just said something. “Sorry, what was that?”

“I said, ‘well that went down like a lead balloon.’”

The voice is ringed in a dark orange corona when it finds its way to Aziraphale’s ears, and he frowns in confusion. He supposes it makes a certain amount of sense that there would be some dissonance in interactions with a demon, but the color still catches him off his guard. “Yes. Yes, it did, rather,” he manages.

“Bit of an overreaction, if you ask me. First offense and everything,” the demon continues in his coppery drawl. “I can’t see what’s so bad about knowing the difference between good and evil anyway.”

Aziraphale’s gaze darts between the demon and the two humans forging their hapless path into the desert east of Eden. He can’t help wondering what exactly caused this rust-colored serpent to fall. Was it something as trivial as eating an apple? Did he regret it? Could demons even _feel_ regret? _Best not to dwell on it,_ he thinks, doing his best to swallow his concerns.

“Well it must _be_ bad…” he tries, trailing off as he reaches ineffectually for a name. He lets his eyes slip shut for a moment, overwhelmed by the absurd situation of a demon debating ethics with him. _Did I know your name once? I must have. I knew the names of all the starmakers. A pity I never met any. Their work is so beautiful._

“Crawly,” the demon answers, nodding his head affably. As if this whole exchange were the most natural thing in the world.

“Crawly. Otherwise you wouldn’t have tempted them into it.” Aziraphale looks out over the sands, his heart hurting for Adam and Eve’s plight.

“Oh, they just said ‘get up there and make some trouble’,” Crawly says, his words taking on a paler orange hue.

“Well obviously, you’re a demon. It’s what you do,” Aziraphale mutters irritably, his attention splitting in too many directions. This is the natural order of things, he knows this. Simple laws had been laid down, and to so blatantly disobey them— well. Of course there had been punishment. Adam and Eve had pushed against this order, disobeyed, _knowing_ what the consequences were. Crawly had done the same. He feels frustration bubbling just beneath the surface and tamps it down, not wanting to take whatever bait Crawly is offering him.

“Not very subtle of the Almighty though. Fruit tree in the middle of a garden with a _Don’t Touch_ sign. I mean, why not put it on the top of a high mountain?” Crawly continues, either unaware of Aziraphale’s annoyance or ignoring it entirely. “Or on the _moon_? Makes you wonder what God’s really planning.”

“Best not to speculate. It’s all part of the Great Plan. It’s not for us to understand,” Aziraphale says in an attempt to shut down this particular line of questioning. “It’s _ineffable_.”

“The Great Plan’s ineffable?” Crawly scoffs.

“Exactly. It is beyond understanding and incapable of being put into words,” Aziraphale responds calmly, letting the chronicler in him return briefly to soothe his nerves. He may have embraced his new role of principality as best as he was able, but the love of being a chronicler still burns in him. He suspects it will always be a part of him, the center of him, no matter how many roles he takes on. Angels don’t react well to change, after all.

Crawly eyes him as he speaks, searching for a new angle to strike from.

“Didn’t you have a flaming sword?”

 _Oh no._ “Uh.”

“You did, it was flaming like anything. Lost it already, have you?”

Aziraphale is being goaded. He knows this. He averts his eyes to stare out at where Adam is aggressively wielding the sword in question in the face of a lion. “Gave it away,” he mutters.

“You _what_?” Crawly’s voice blooms bright around him, taking on an amber hue that matches his eyes.

“I gave it away!” Aziraphale says loudly, committing to the statement. _Probably best to pass the controls back to the principality. No place for a chronicler anymore. Not here on Earth. Not while I’m speaking to a demon._ “There are vicious animals. It’s going to be cold out there, and she’s expecting already! And I said ‘here you go, flaming sword. Don’t thank me, and don’t let the sun go down on you here.’ I _do_ hope I didn’t do the wrong thing.”

The bewilderment in Crawly’s eyes spreads into a distracted smile as Aziraphale babbles. “Oh, you’re an angel. I don’t think you can do the wrong thing.”

Aziraphale wonders briefly at the floral taste suddenly prickling across his tongue, before shrugging it off as more of the same angel/demon dissonance. “Oh. Oh, thank you. It’s been bothering me,” he says, almost allowing himself to believe Crawly’s honeyed words.

“I’ve been worrying too. What if I did the _right_ thing with the whole ‘eat the apple’ business? A demon can get into a lot of trouble for doing the right thing. It’d be funny if we both got it wrong, eh? If I did the good thing and you did the bad one?” Crawly chuckles, as though actually amused by the horrible prospect.

Aziraphale stares dumbly, his senses flooded by the tantalizing taste of flowers and a soft chuckle wrapping his mind in a bright glittering gold. It’s familiar and inviting. It promises to be _exceptionally_ comfortable. There is a flicker of some unknown emotion deep within him—something that teeters on the wall between sorrow and contentment, something bittersweet and enticing—and for the briefest moment, he desperately wants to lean into it. He smiles and offers a chuckle in return.

And then the moment passes. With a jolt, he remembers that he is speaking to a _demon_. Not just any demon, but one who is a master of _temptation_. The wily serpent responsible for the current mess he’s facing.

“No!” he sputters, returning to himself. “It wouldn’t be funny at all!”

Crawly just shrugs, and manages to continue looking amused. Aziraphale is considering pushing the issue, letting the sudden flare of righteous indignation lead the way, when he feels the first drops of water on his cheeks.

 _That’s new,_ he thinks, turning to the sky and letting Earth’s first rain pelt his face. The burst of righteousness is washed away and his thoughts travel across the sands to the freshly exiled humans. God’s new children, cast out and into the elements for making one mistake.

He sighs to himself and wonders again who this Crawly had once been. He wonders where his misstep was, what the seed was that had been planted in him, ultimately taking root and pushing him over the edge. Pulling him down. He wonders if Crawly remembers it.

He wonders if it hurt.

Aziraphale grimaces. _Of course it hurt. How could it not?_

Without a word, he lifts his wing and lets the serpent of Eden inch a little closer, offering him a modicum of shelter. It’s not enough to keep the raindrops from reaching him entirely, but Aziraphale figures that’s not the point.

_A moment of comfort, then. Probably my duty as an angel, and far easier than righteous fury, all things considered. Then he will return to Hell and I to Heaven and we hopefully never have to see each other again. He can get his pat on the back and I can wipe my hands of this whole disaster._

Crawly’s gaze bounces between the wing above him and Aziraphale’s face a few times, a movement that Aziraphale observes out of the corner of his eye, not shifting his stare from the desert.

“Where do you think they’ll go?” Crawly asks, turning his attention to the diminishing silhouettes of the two humans.

“Perhaps you should have thought of that before you got them exiled,” Aziraphale says. He had meant it to sound harsh, but he finds his fight has left him and the words that escape him just sound commiserative.

“I didn’t force the apple on them,” the coppery voice replies. He peers out from under Aziraphale’s wing, releasing a soft hiss through gritted teeth at a particularly bright flash of lightning, before pulling back under the feathered roof. “Just let them know they had a choice. At any rate, I’m sure they’ll be fine. They’ll go forth and prosper and multiply and all that.”

“And how do you figure that?”

“They’re the Almighty’s new favorites aren’t they?” he says, arching one eyebrow. “They broke the rules and didn’t get immediately thrown off the edge of the world. This is barely a slap on the wrist. It seems She’s giving the whole forgiveness thing a whirl.” His tone betrays no emotion when he says this, but the word _forgiveness_ is a deep rust color when it lands on Aziraphale, sharp and raw and anything but forgiving. Aziraphale winces.

They fall into silence as they wait out the storm, Aziraphale occasionally flicking his wing out behind him to shrug off the gathering water. Crawly smiles when he does this, a quirk that he would have likely missed if it weren’t for the faint taste of flowers that seems to accompany it every time. He keeps waiting for Crawly to wrap him in that ethereal gold again, to attempt to tantalize him over some edge, but no temptation comes. The silence is what Aziraphale would describe as _companionable_ , had it been shared with a fellow angel.

The sun is low in the sky by the time the rain lets up. Aziraphale settles his wings against his back as Crawly gives his a luxurious stretch and tucks them into the ether. “Well, angel,” he says in a pale orange voice. “Oh, great principality. Guardian of the Eastern Ga-”

“Aziraphale,” he cuts him off with a grimace.

“Well, _Aziraphale_ ,” Crawly corrects. “It’s been a pleasure.” Flashing his floral grin again, he extends a hand. Caught off guard and unable to formulate an escape in time, Aziraphale takes it, intending to give it a quick shake and then retreat to safety.

He vaguely registers that the hand in his is slightly cool to the touch, but finds himself unable to focus on anything else as his mouth floods with the taste of grapes. Crawly’s serpentine eyes go wide and lock onto Aziraphale, their faces mirroring shock and confusion back at each other. Aziraphale isn’t sure how long he stands there, motionless and locked in a handshake with Crawly, tasting _grapes_ of all things, but when his mind finally catches up with the rest of him ( _a demon, you shook hands with a demon, you absolute_ idiot), he yanks his hand away as though he’s been bitten.

“Right then!” he says far too loudly, knotting his hands together in front of himself. He tries to force a feeling of relief over himself as the taste of grapes fades, but is stalled in shock. “Lots to do! A garden to shutter up and all that!”

“Uh. Yeah, trouble to cause,” Crawly stammers, bright and brassy. “Wiles and whatnot.”

Crawly stares, unblinking, for a few more moments before giving his head a slight shake and looking out after the humans again. “Well. Be seeing you, principality Aziraphale,” he says with a curt nod and begins his climb down the wall before Aziraphale has a chance to chime in with _you most certainly will not_.

Aziraphale doesn’t immediately start shuttering Eden. Instead, he stands above the eastern gate as though he were rooted to the spot, acutely aware of the space his body occupies on the planet. He’s unable to shake the feeling of a line being drawn from the sun at his back, through the center of him, and out towards the shrinking silhouette in the sands. The puzzling sensation of a canyon opening up in front of him wraps itself around him as he watches Crawly disappear into the deepening gloom.

He isn’t sure what Heaven has in store for him next, though it’s probably nothing favorable after the incident with the sword. And while a demotion back to chronicler would restore a level of _simplicity_ to his life, the thought of it—of taking a step backwards—suddenly weighs heavily on him.

He takes a deep breath, a quirk of this new physical corporation he’s found he is very fond of, and tries to recenter himself. Earthy smells from the rainwashed garden at his back fill his lungs. Crickets chirp distantly, filling the night air with a soft and blessedly colorless music. When the moon eventually rises, it shines its pale light down on him, still rooted in place and staring at the point on the horizon where Crawly followed after Adam and Eve.

His mind lingers on the chaotic prickle of a demon for far longer than he would like to admit; utterly confused, quietly curious, and subtly ringed in melancholy.

Above all, Aziraphale is relieved to see him go.


	5. Take this cup and make a wish

** Athens, Greece - 390 BC **

Crowley smells the angel before he sees him— a soft and floral intruder in his mind. It’s not the first time a whiff of jasmine or a hint of the ocean has found its way to him as a precursor to seeing Aziraphale, but it still manages to disorient him every time. His thoughts stutter to a halt in the middle of the agora, followed by the rest of him.

Ignoring the bustle of people around him, he turns his head over each shoulder, looking for the source of the smell. A patch of jasmine twining its way up the side of a building, or perhaps a garden nestled next to a nearby temple. False alarms are a thing he’s also grown accustomed to; the earth is always finding cheeky new ways of forcing Aziraphale into his mind at the strangest times.

But there are no flowers to be found in this busy marketplace. The scent of Aziraphale’s smile fills his mind, pulling a suggestion of a smile across his own face. _Just jasmine. No trace of the sea… he’s in a good mood, then?_

Crowley lets his mind drift back to the last time he’d seen Aziraphale. It’s been nearly a century, but the location is the same. Aziraphale has had a strong affinity for Athens from the start, taking to the scholars and poets as though he had been built for them.

And in a way, hadn’t he been? Over the millennia, Crowley had used context clues and casual-but-not-really observations to piece together an educated guess about Aziraphale’s former role as one of Heaven’s chroniclers. It was seeing the angel slip on Athens like a glove that made the guess crystallize into an assumption.

At their last meeting, Aziraphale had been deep in his cups, waxing poetic to Crowley about the implications of Arete. He had relaxed into the conversation, carried away by romantic daydreams about the rise of Sophism. There had been a subtle shift in his body language, a slight lean across the table, a dip of his eyes to his cup before he’d lifted them again to meet Crowley’s. A smile had crested then. A smile that brought the smell of jasmine floating into the space between them; the first time Crowley had been the one to draw it out of him.

It was the smallest of moments—a handful of seconds set against the infinite backdrop of immortality—but it’s one of his most tangible memories. Every detail of the scene is penned in him with shocking clarity, hung like a constellation in the night sky.

The establishment of democracy had been great and all—a real revelation, that—but allowing him to cultivate jasmine was what Crowley would always appreciate Athens for.

A shining periwinkle laugh cuts through his reverie, a sound he can feel and see more than hear. _Definitely not a false alarm._

Abandoning his loose plans to incite a riot against the baker he had convinced to adulterate his bread, Crowley winds his way fluidly through the merchant stalls and artisan’s workshops, honing in on the jasmine.

Following this sixth sense leads him into the covered colonnade of the nearby stoa. Some of the crowd from the agora has spilled over into this public building—artists displaying their work, the odd merchant selling wares out of one of the small rooms along the back wall, scholars clustered around scrolls and maps as they carry out impassioned conversations—but the shift in atmosphere is palpable. It’s quieter in here. The ceiling offering protection from the harsh sun overhead manages to instill a homey, inviting feel, in spite of the fact that one side of the building is completely open to the market.

He finds Aziraphale tucked back in one of the small rooms, walled in by marble on three sides, talking animatedly with a bright-eyed boy who can’t be older than fifteen. A manuscript sits open on a table between them, nestled among rolls of parchment.

 _Of course. Of course the fool angel is taking on a pupil_. Crowley stifles a grin of amusement, crosses his arms, and leans against a pillar just outside the nook to watch. He makes a mental note to pester Aziraphale about keeping a low profile if he wants to be able to _stay_ in this hub of humanity beyond the span of a human’s lifetime.

As though responding to a stage direction, Aziraphale’s hands freeze in midair with a small frown and he raises his head to scan the colonnade. His eyes land on Crowley and the jasmine fades from the air, a tang of sea salt edging in to replace it.

Not seeing another option, Crowley lets his grin the rest of the way out and throws Aziraphale a cheerful wave.

Aziraphale presses his mouth into a thin line, causing the smell of brine to surge briefly, but quickly collects himself as he turns back to his student. There is a quick exchange of words, a rustle of parchment and books being gathered, a supportive hand clapping the boy’s shoulder. Then the boy is nodding stoically and striding out of the room with a bundle of scrolls tucked under one arm. His inquisitive eyes flit over Crowley as he passes, doing a subtle double-take and frowning at the serpentine yellow, then he’s gone.

_The eyes. Always the damn eyes. Really need to find a way to distract from them._

Aziraphale passes shortly after the boy and Crowley pushes off the pillar, turning on his heel to fall into step beside him.

“Hello, principality Aziraphale,” Crowley drawls, stretching out the title with carefully crafted nonchalance. “Fancy meeting you here. In Athens. _Still_.”

The salt on the air swells again as Aziraphale grimaces at the playful use of _principality_. “Crawly,” he says in a voice that flashes with a steely glint.

Crowley winces at the sound of the name. It had been millennia since he’d stopped thinking of himself as _Crawly_. He’d become Crowley in his own mind shortly after shifting out of his serpent form. There had just never been a proper time to re-introduce himself to Aziraphale, with how infrequently their paths crossed. The salty annoyance currently radiating off him was not an encouraging sign that now was that time. Besides, that seems like the sort of thing _friends_ would do, and Crowley still had no real grasp on how to define his relationship with Aziraphale.

“What are you doing here, anyway?” Aziraphale asks as they make their way into the brightly lit courtyard.

Crowley shrugs. “Just passing through. Politicians to tempt, trouble to cause. You know how it is.” He shoots Aziraphale a sideways glance. “I could ask the same about you. Have you left the city in the past century?”

“I most certainly have.”

“Right. Long enough for humans to forget you?”

“I don’t see why that’s relevant,” Aziraphale huffs.

“Aziraphale. Be serious,” Crowley says, furrowing his brow with concern. “You can’t just stay in the same hub of humanity for hundreds of years. People are going to notice. _Especially_ if you insist on taking on pupils.” The fact that a nonzero number of citizens in the agora have smiled and offered pleasantries to Aziraphale as the two of them pass is not lost on Crowley.

“I appreciate your concern, but I assure you I’m being careful.” His voice still has the clipped edge to it, but the steely sheen has given way to a brighter silver, the salt fading with it. “As for Pelagios, he’s not a _pupil_ per se. I’m just trying to get him on the right path. His father would have him join the army against his will and I want to make sure he sees all his options.”

Aziraphale sighs. One gentle wave seems to pass over him; a melancholy tide coming in to lap dutifully at the shore rather than some powerful crash of the sea. “He’s so _bright_ and I’d hate to see such a fine mind wasted as a soldier.”

“So you’re saying that you’re his mentor?” Crowley says. _Sounds an awful lot like temptation_ , he doesn’t say.

Aziraphale narrows his eyes and fidgets with the scrolls in his arms. “I suppose I am. Just until he finds a proper teacher.”

“You do realize that makes him your pupil, correct?”

“Oh, hush,” Aziraphale says softly, the silver melting into his neutral sky blue glow. “I’m aware of the risks. I’ll have you know I haven’t mentored anyone since Herodotus, and that wasn’t even within the city walls. For the most part.”

“Herodotus!” A bark of laughter escapes Crowley before he can stop himself. “Of course he was one of yours. All those fanciful tales passed off as historical documents.” He shakes his head incredulously. “A real weirdo, that one.”

“There’s nothing _fanciful_ about a different way to look at the world,” Aziraphale says matter-of-factly. Crowley listens closely for any hint of a metallic shine to his words, but they continue to glow their even, soothing blue. There’s no annoyance there. No fight in his voice. Simply a scholar stating the facts. “The ability to hold multiple subjective truths is an important facet of humanity.”

“Uh-huh,” Crowley grunts, swallowing his laughter.

“It’s part of their design!” Aziraphale continues earnestly.

“The man wrote about _dolphins_ rescuing a _bard_ from _pirates_. In a _history_ book.”

“And you don’t think the world is a bit more interesting for it?”

“I- Wha- Well, obviously, yes, it’s more _interesting_ , but…” Crowley trails off, baffled at the turn in the conversation and completely at a loss for how to respond to an angel—a _chronicler_ , no less—speaking to the merits of inaccurate histories.

Aziraphale lifts his chin a bit. “Humanity may seem unpredictable,” he says, resolve ringing in his voice. “But you can rest assured that they are a very deliberate piece of the ineffable plan.”

 _And there’s the other shoe._ “How nice for them,” Crowley mutters, feeling his amusement sour somewhat. Suddenly desperate to talk about _anything else_ , he adds, “Where are we going, anyway?”

“ _I_ am going to my apartments in the Koele district,” Aziraphale says with a flash of steel. “I’m sure I have no idea where _you_ are going.”

“Aw, don’t be like that. Look, it’s been a hundred years. You must have _loads_ to tell me about what you’ve been up to in this wonderful city.” Crowley reaches into the folds of his tunic and, with a subtle snap of his fingers, returns with a bottle of wine. He wiggles his eyebrows at Aziraphale. “Eh?”

Aziraphale clicks his tongue in annoyance, but his eyes dart from the wine to the street in front of them a few times.

“At the very least, I assume you’ll want to keep an eye on your hereditary enemy,” Crowley continues dramatically. “Satan only knows what kinds of _evil deeds_ I could get up to if left unchecked.”

A sniff from Aziraphale.

“Think of the _paperwork_ if you don’t thwart me in time.”

“Oh, very well,” Aziraphale concedes. The salt and steel surrounding him begin to fade as his voice drifts back to its neutral blue once more. “The paperwork really is dreadful.”

_A win._

Crowley forces a neutral expression onto his face. “Exactly. Paperwork.”

* * *

The house Aziraphale is keeping is a small building whose rooms encircle an open-air courtyard. Following him inside, Crowley is immediately struck by the _clutter_. Scrolls, tablets, and writing tools cover the tables and shelves. Odd bits of pottery and sculpture compete for space on countertops and tables, sometimes losing the battle and settling for a perch on furniture that seems to exist solely for that purpose.

The rooms feel like a home, and a complicated mix of worry and endearment passes over Crowley as he takes it all in. He had known that Aziraphale was somewhat entrenched in the city, but he hadn’t been aware that he had started to put down roots. Feeling suddenly antsy, he wanders to the desk and distracts himself by inspecting the art supplies.

Aziraphale busies himself at one of the shelves, stacking the scrolls in a careful, although nonsensical to the casual observer, order. Speaking over his shoulder, he says, “You never did tell me why exactly you’re in town.”

“Because it’s not that exciting,” Crowley says, picking up a paintbrush and giving it a twirl between his fingers. He perches on the edge of the desk and shrugs. “Just tempting an archon to skim some money off the top of his taxes.”

“Hrm,” Aziraphale grunts distractedly. He pulls a scroll from the top shelf and moves to the desk where he uses it to give Crowley’s shoulder a gentle swat. Crowley slides off the desk and begins circling the room, leaning in to examine the various trinkets and paintings, still spinning the paintbrush like a tiny baton. “I would have thought you’d be here for the comet,” Aziraphale says, unrolling the scroll on the desk and weighing it down on either end with kitsch and clutter.

Crowley freezes, then jerks his head up to stare at Aziraphale. “Th- The comet?” he croaks, feeling a cold surge of panic crash through him. A panic tinged with old grief and older anger. _Does he know? How could he know? Surely he doesn’t know. Wouldn’t matter if he did… would it?_

Aziraphale looks up in alarm, his mouth falling slightly open. Turning at a glacial speed, he finds Crowley’s eyes and holds the stare for a long, still moment. A thread seems to pull taut in the space between them, an invisible sort of pressure that seems to shrink the room down to just the two of them.

“Yes. The comet,” he says slowly. His voice is gentle, but gleams bright and silver, a strange new combination that Crowley’s frazzled brain isn’t able to parse. “It seems like a prime opportunity to sway more people to paganism. Disastrous omens or wrathful deities or some such nonsense.”

Crowley fumbles to find his voice, dropping a few guttural consonants at his feet before he regains his grip on language. “Paganism,” he says weakly. He realizes he’s parroting Aziraphale, but his body has fully switched into autopilot and he doesn’t currently feel capable of much else.

The comet. The _fucking_ comet. He has spent his time on Earth trying not to think about the comet beyond wishing it would hurry up and launch itself out of the solar system already. He _hates_ the bloody thing.

Aziraphale continues to stare at him with hawk-like intensity. “I’ve observed it for several centuries now,” he says very slowly, very cautiously, shining the silver beam of his voice along the thread. “It seems to pass by Earth every seventy six years or so.” When Crowley says nothing, Aziraphale steps to the side and gestures at the scroll on his desk, never breaking their eye contact. “I recorded it to the best of my ability on its last pass, but there’s only so much I can do from down here. And I’m a rather poor artist I’m afraid.”

Crowley’s useless heart turns over at that, squeezing uncomfortably in his chest. “You— Recorded— Sorry… artist?” He blinks, the flutter of his eyelids severing the delicate thread between them. The paintbrush is still tangled within the web of his fingers, held aloft at his side like some bizarre totem, and he lets his hand drop as the thread goes slack. He takes a breath he does not need, hoping to steady himself with the affectation.

Aziraphale simply nods, seeming to relax a bit as the crystalline moment passes. Crowley lets his feet carry him mechanically to the desk, where he gingerly sets the brush down next to its fellows. After stealing a glance at Aziraphale’s complicated expression ( _Confused? Concerned? Sympathetic?_ ), he looks down at the unfurled parchment.

Half of the page is filled with Aziraphale’s compact handwriting, columns of notes and observations marching across the parchment like disciplined soldiers. The other half is filled with a painting. Slightly crude and unskilled, but there’s no mistaking that it’s a comet set against a night sky. Aziraphale had taken pains to include a backdrop of relevant constellations, measured and drawn in ink with mathematical accuracy. Serpens and Pisces, Aquarius and Delphinus, the hunter, the lyre, the swan. They all jump out at him, wrapping his mind in memories he’s spent millennia avoiding. The comet sits in front of them all, a blazing and defiant brushstroke against the heavens.

The _god damned_ comet. _His_ comet. Crowley swallows against a sudden tightness in his throat as he stares down at the final thing he added to the sky before being torn out of it. The thing he hadn’t even meant to make. Hadn’t _wanted_ to make. It’s an old injury. A mistake. The rival that had bested him but still returned to mock him once or twice a century.

Aziraphale clears his throat very softly. “If I’ve run the numbers right, it should be visible tonight.” _You’ve run the numbers right, angel. You know you have. We both do._ “I was hoping to see how its position in the sky correlates to its appearance in 467.”

“Why?” Crowley asks hoarsely.

“Well, it’s quite beautiful for one thing,” Aziraphale responds in his low, soothing timbre. Still silver, but Crowley swears it’s a voice full of _kindness_. A color he is used to, but a tone that shouldn’t be meant for him. “But mostly because there’s hardly anything known about it. Humans don’t have the lifespan or the means to even realize that it’s orbiting them, and Heaven— Well…”

Crowley lifts his eyes from the page as Aziraphale falls silent, seeking eye contact and clinging to the blue like a lifeline.

Spurred by something unseen and unheard, Aziraphale takes a deep breath and continues. “There’s no record of it in the archives that I’m aware of. Even if there was, it would be a bit… frowned upon for me to request it,” he says, soft and silver.

“Wait, angels aren’t allowed into Heaven’s library?”

“Chroniclers are, certainly. But I’m not a chronicler. Not anymore,” he says, his eyes focused and searching on Crowley’s. “I’m meant to fully embrace my role of principality, and that is what I have done.”

The piece of personal information, offered freely and benevolently, has a calming effect. Crowley arches an eyebrow and nods meaningfully at the scroll on the desk.

“Yes, well, can I be blamed if my interpretation of what it means to be a guardian is a bit unorthodox? I’m simply working with the tools I already possessed.”

Crowley laughs weakly. “A loophole.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You found a loophole!”

“Oh, come now,” Aziraphale huffs, the blue starting to return to his voice. “I read the job description, formed an interpretation, and no one ever reprimanded me so I forged ahead.”

“Aziraphale. That’s the _definition_ of a loophole.”

“I like to think that if I were doing anything truly _wrong_ , Heaven would let me know,” he says, the silver fading.

“Right, because they’re always been so straightforward in the past,” Crowley mutters. He forces a casual tone into his voice and continues, as brightly as he can manage, “Anway! Very impressive note-taking for a principality.” With the initial shock of the comet beginning to fade, he’s eager to keep the mood moving toward safer waters. Familiar territory. He moves to find two cups and pour the wine.

“Might as well tuck in now,” he says, handing Aziraphale a cup. “We’ve apparently got a long night of comet-watching ahead of us.” _And I’ll be twice-damned if I’m doing this sober._

Aziraphale forgets to act irritated, agreeing and nodding as though he had been the one to extend the invitation. The confusing contrast of softness and silver has left his voice, his ship pulling back to its stable, sky blue center.

* * *

Aziraphale spends the first bottle of wine dreamily admiring the endeavors of the sophists, a sentiment that Crowley teases him mercilessly for, claiming that he _is_ a sophist. When Aziraphale vehemently denies this, Crowley marches to the shelves and begins pulling down a pile of plays, poems, and doctrines, his impish grin widening as Aziraphale’s pout deepens. He saves Herodotus’ _Histories_ for last, finding the passage about heroic dolphins and clearing his throat loudly before falling into a dramatic reading.

“Yes, fine! You’ve made your point!” Aziraphale huffs, stalking away to procure more wine.

Crowley spends the second bottle trying to find a single comedy in Aziraphale’s collection of plays.

“Tragedies! Nothing but Aeschylus!” he moans, tossing aside _The Myrmidons_. “You have got to be that gloomy bastard’s biggest fan.”

“Have you actually _read_ any of those?” Aziraphale asks, raising his eyebrows from behind his cup. “The Achilles myth really is quite compelling.”

Crowley grunts into his wine. “Nah. There’s enough gloominess in the world already. Always preferred Aristophanes, myself. I don’t suppose you have any of his laying around.”

“After that dreadful business with _The Clouds_? Surely not.”

“Wouldn’t have pegged you for a Socrates apologist.”

“It’s the _principle_ of the thing.”

They spend the third bottle discussing Plato. Or rather, Aziraphale launches into an impromptu lecture regarding the architecture of the soul, and Crowley, enjoying the warm glow of the wine and the warmer glow of Aziraphale’s voice, offers his full attention. He nods sagely at all the parts where Aziraphale appears to have made some important point, scoffs in outrage when debate seems to demand it, furrows his brow and rests his chin on the heel of his hand when the notes and diagrams are spread between them— the very picture of an astute student.

Night is seeping across the sky by the time Crowley digs out a fourth bottle and follows Aziraphale into the courtyard. Aziraphale unrolls a blank scroll on the small table, pinning it down with the wine bottle on one end and a jumble of brushes and pigments on the other. He chatters happily about how getting to view the comet from the tilt of a new season will allow for an entirely new set of data. Crowley isn’t necessarily interested in Aziraphale’s scientific method, but finds the sight of his voice—bright and clear as a summer sky—keeps his heart grounded in a way he hadn’t expected.

When he drapes himself over the chair and lets his eyes wander across the courtyard bathed in the comet’s light, the memory of anger and grief fade into background noise.

They fall into a comfortable silence as Aziraphale sets about the work of charting the current visible constellations onto the page. His moves his reed pen across the page in efficient, practiced strokes, holding the tool up to the sky every so often to make some internal measurement that he then applies to the parchment with stunning accuracy. As the ink on the constellations dries, he moves to the other side of the scroll to begin his notes. He records the length and shape of the comet’s tail, the brightness and color of the coma, the date, the weather. Crowley watches with distant fascination as the chronicler in Aziraphale moves through this dance, unwittingly breaking an old trauma apart and laying it out in calm, logical compartments.

Setting the pen aside, he reaches for a paintbrush. A small sigh escapes him then, and he glances at Crowley sheepishly. “The easy part’s done, I’m afraid,” he says, uncorking a small pot of paint. He holds the brush above it tentatively, as though he’s nervous about breaking the surface of the liquid.

“Four thousand years on this planet and you’ve never picked up a knack for art?” Crowley teases.

“Not for lack of trying, I promise you that,” Aziraphale says with a slight frown. “I’m just no _good_ at it. A chronicler-turned-principality isn’t exactly a formula for artistic ability.”

“I could do it,” Crowley says. He’s not sure if it’s the wine, the combined company of Aziraphale and the comet, or some dissonant combination of the three that makes him say it, but the words fall from him before he has a chance to consider them. “If you like,” he adds.

Aziraphale tilts his head and looks at Crowley curiously. A complicated play of emotion passes over his face in the span of a few seconds, too quickly to pin down any one reaction against a sea of other feelings. Then, he slides the parchment across the table and wordlessly holds the brush out to Crowley.

Crowley has tried his hand at human forms of art a few times over the ages. The ability to produce creative works is part of his foundation, and no matter how many additional roles get stacked on top of it, it will always be the center of him. But, for every earthly art form he had picked up, he always ended up abandoning them. It’s not that he didn’t _enjoy_ them, it’s just that they had never felt meant for him. His territory had been the stars, and after that door had slammed shut, it felt wrong somehow to try and absorb humanity’s art as a replacement. So, he’d left the humans to it and settled for appreciating what they made instead.

When he accepts the paintbrush from Aziraphale, he feels something shift in him. The slightest tectonic slide suggesting the possibility of new terrain. As if moving by muscle memory, he dips the brush in the pot and begins to paint.

“Do you think its starmaker had a name for it?” Aziraphale asks after a long spell of gazing up at the sky. “So many things made at the end went unnamed.”

“Wouldn’t know,” Crowley grunts, allowing himself a furtive glance at the comet before returning his attention to the page.

Naming is a funny business, a fact that Crowley knows better than anyone. The truth of the matter is that he’s never had a _chance_ to name the thing, given how quickly everything happened. Thinking back on it now, he has no idea what the angel Joriel would have dubbed a rubble pile hurtling around the sun in a retrograde orbit. That version of him feels like less than a memory. Joriel is a mirage. A fragment of himself, left in a forgotten past. An artist whose language faded away when he did.

There’s a whimsical sigh beside him, and a faint floral perfume twists its way into Crowley’s mind, pulling his thoughts back to Earth.

He looks up from his work, sensing Aziraphale’s smile before he sees it. It’s a subtle thing, existing more in his eyes than anywhere else. Illuminated by the comet’s ghostly glow, the smile is a rare bird, poking its head out from the nest at the first signs of spring to assess the landscape. Aziraphale watches the comet and Crowley watches Aziraphale, finding the light of his final creation far easier to bear when reflected back at him this way.

He allows himself a smile of his own as he reaches for the blue paint. Shaking the atrophy off of his artist’s instinct, he dips his brush in the summer-sky hue and begins to paint with a hand that was built for exactly this. He adds new depth and highlights to the parchment bound comet; embellishments that might not be entirely accurate, but certainly make the portrait a bit more interesting.

Crowley, as he is now, thinks naming the comet would be an easy task. Surrounded by the soft din of humanity’s creativity and soaking up failed starlight as it reflects off Aziraphale, he thinks that twice-damned pisser of a comet looks an awful lot like an Icarus.


	6. Don't tell me about the abyss

** Ostia - 12 BC **

Crowley reaches into his toga and pulls the scroll from between the folds of cloth for the thousandth time. He rolls it absently through his hands as he stares out over the docks. It’s become a comforting bit of muscle memory over the past century and a half— carefully running his fingers over the parchment, trying to imagine he can feel the depth and the history of the fleeting bit of humanity in his hands, then willing away any flaws caused by his hands and delicately tucking it away again. He takes a deep breath of the sea air, taps the scroll gently against his knuckles, and lets the breath out as a sigh.

He’s early. Of course he’s early. There’s been little else to do in the month since Cestius completed his monument and, as such, he’s taken to haunting the docks.

Tempting the man had been one of the easiest jobs of his demonic career. Hell had given him something of a blank check for this one, seeming more interested in keeping Crowley busy than anything else, and he had been squeezing as much downtime out of it as possible. _Pick a magistrate,_ his orders had said, _a member of one of the religious colleges. Tempt him to sin – dealer’s choice_. Crowley had done what he always did in such cases. The bare minimum.

He had sought out a mid-ranking member within the least important college and set his sights on pride. It had always been the sin he had the easiest time tempting anyone into, as well as coming with the added bonus of generally enjoyable results. Everyone had a kernel of pride hidden in them somewhere, humans even more than most, given their crippling fear of being forgotten. It’s simply a matter of coaxing it out. In the case of Gaius Cestius, it had taken little more than a few cups of wine and a casual reminder of his mortality.

_Such is the way of this mortal coil, you know? Things live, grow, die, then they’re forgotten. A real shame to consider with someone as impressive as you, my friend._

And just like that, the deal was sealed. Cestius had begun drafting his garish tomb the very next day, a gaudy monument set just outside the city limits. Construction of the towering pyramid had begun within a month, and it brought Crowley with it, sauntering by every few weeks to plant new seeds of unrest.

_Surely a man of your stature has the means to procure frescoes._

_Mmm, can’t you just see a pristine marble interior in your mind’s eye? What a statement that would make._

_Have you heard about what Romulus is doing with_ his _tomb? I hear the sculptures are breathtaking._

Which is how he had found the excuse to spend the year in Rome with very few obligations on his plate. It had been an interesting time to be in the city—the rise of empires, while often troubling, is rarely dull—but it was the bustling port of Ostia that had pulled at him the strongest. The art and sweeping architecture of the little town is stunning, but it was the sea that truly reeled him in. The sharp smell of it, the tireless humming and hissing of the waves, the endless shining expanse of water reaching out to the horizon where it disappeared into the sky. In a distant, nostalgic sort of way, it reminds him of the cosmos. In a much more tangible way, it’s Aziraphale. All the stern, steadfast stubbornness of him that Crowley had come to appreciate just as much as his soft, whimsical side.

When he had actually run into Aziraphale while wandering the docks, lungs full of the sea and mind full of angel, it had been such a shock that he’d wondered if he was dreaming.

In hindsight, it makes perfect sense that Heaven’s representative on Earth would be stationed in such a vibrant hub on the outskirts of a booming empire. At the time however, running into him with the scroll hidden away in his pocket and the comet’s arrival a few months away, had felt eerily like fate. He’s never been one to put any stock in the idea of providence, but he still finds his mind wandering back to linger on Aziraphale. On the memory of painting Icarus for him. How, out of the fifty two times he had been forced to face that burning mockery of a comet, the time in Athens was the only instance that hadn’t felt like heartbreak.

He had made a point to not bother Aziraphale too much in Ostia, always hyper-aware of how easy it was to chase him off. Moments like the ones created in Athens were exceptionally rare and felt as delicate as spun sugar when he was within them.

So Crowley had composed a letter instead. A brief handful of sentences that he sent along to Aziraphale, mentioning the impeccable timing of the two of them plus the comet, and if he should like help composing his field notes again, Crowley _supposed_ he was free. Aziraphale’s response had been an equally short note, giving a date, time, and place, and Crowley spent the next month doing not much of anything besides wishing he hadn’t _read_ the damn scroll currently in his hands.

With a practiced movement, he magicks a dog-eared edge smooth and slips it back into his toga, then begins wandering the length of the docks, wishing he could will the sun to set as well. The whole business with the scroll would be so much easier if he could have claimed ignorance. Less a deeply meaningful gift and more a simple matter of, _remember your pal Aeschylus? And remember thinking all those Achilles stories you love so much were lost after the cock-up in the Alexandria harbor? Well, as it turns out, not_ all _of them are lost._ But Crowley had been bored and curious, a combination which never led him anywhere innocuous, and he’d gone ahead and read _Nereids_.

Quite a compelling myth indeed.

He reaches the end of the marina and turns on his heel, pacing back the other direction, his thoughts lingering on Patroclus. _What in Satan’s name am I doing getting gifts for an angel_ _anyway? This is stupid, so bloody stupid, just keep it squirrelled away and find some demonic use for it in the future. Tempt a librarian with it or some nonsense._

The hour before sunset passes much like this— Crowley pacing to one end of the pier, pausing to fiddle with the scroll inside his robes as he glares west and tries to talk himself out of a trajectory that could very well bugger everything permanently, then heaving a sigh and pacing back the other direction.

When the sun finally sets and the last light fades from the sky, he leaves the pier behind and begins the short walk to the ampitheatre. The town is crowded and bustling even as night falls, the baths and temples still alive with voices and laughter. Trade never sleeps and it would be foolish to expect Rome’s major port to ever close its doors. Anyone in the port of Ostia is either a shrewd businessman with an eye for opportunity or a travelling merchant who will have moved on in a few days time. In an unexpected way, Crowley finds this constant flow of people a comfort. If he lets his eyes unfocus, the buzz of them fades into the background static of the sea.

The theatre is just as lively as the rest of the town. There’s no show scheduled for tonight, but people still seem to be taking advantage of the public space. Humans are split off into small groups across the raised steps. Some lounge back on an elbow, laughing boisterously and as they pass a bottle around. Others lean their heads together, smiling and talking in low voices, having a second, silent conversation with their eyes. Scattered throughout the intimate clusters, individuals can be found, heads thrown back and faces turned to the sky, drinking in the appearing stars with whimsical expressions. A few of these stargazers have given in fully and lay sprawled on their backs, arms propped behind their heads and a leg dangling off the steps.

It’s a peaceful tableau of scholars, lovers, and dreamers, and Crowley immediately understands why Aziraphale is drawn to this place. He remembers enough about being an angel to know that the love and idealism radiating off the humans must feel as heady as the finest wine.

He’s easy to spot in the crowd, tucked up in a top corner of the theatre, his silvery hair and bright white toga a beacon in the starlight. Crowley shakes his head and takes a moment to wonder how none of these people realize there’s an angel sitting so obviously among them.

Crowley scales the steps and sinks down next to him. “Hello, Aziraphale.”

“Crowley,” Azirapahle says, bright and blue, nodding as Crowley situates himself on the ledge. He freezes halfway through the motion of wriggling back to lean against the step, the sight of his chosen name glowing in the color of Aziraphale’s voice pushing any witty remark he might have all the way out of his head.

Aziraphales raises his eyebrows curiously. “Everything alright?”

Crowley stammers a bit before returning to himself. “Um. _Crowley_?”

“Your letter,” Aziraphale says, his brows pinching into a small frown. “You signed it as Crowley, so I assumed… do you prefer Crawly? It’s no skin off my—”

“No!” Crowley interrupts. “That is— I mean— No, Crowley is fine.” He leans back against the step and does his best to tamp his surprise back down. _You spent so much brain power composing a two sentence letter that you didn’t stop to think of how you were signing it. Genius._

He shoots a quick glance up at the sky where the comet is appearing dimly among the stars, then brings his eyes back down to Earth to examine Aziraphale’s setup. Or rather, his lack of one. There’s no pile of notes and scrolls, no paints, no writing utensils. It appears the only thing Aziraphale has bothered to bring at all is a few oranges, one of them peeled and half-eaten, laid out on a small cloth next to him.

“Leaving the chronicler at home?” Crowley asks, quirking an eyebrow.

“Ah. Well,” Aziraphale says, his voice glowing a paler blue than normal. “There’s no real need for it tonight. The comet should linger in the visible range for at least a week, so I’ll have a chance to take any notes I need later.” The slightest flush creeps into his cheeks, and he adds hurriedly, “Besides, there’s not much I can note about it from Earth that I haven’t already. Um— orange?” he asks, nodding at the fruit beside him.

Crowley stares at him for a moment before shaking his head in bewilderment, and then lets his eyes drift back across the murmuring crowd, glad for the sea of distractions around him. Aziraphale, apparently unbothered, helps himself to a piece of fruit and turns his eyes skyward, chewing happily.

The implication that Aziraphale might be here as a friend instead of the opposition has a strange effect on Crowley. It's a tug at his edges. A single pleat in a complex origami creature, unfolded and smoothed out. He’d entertained the optimistic wish of having a friend in Aziraphale for quite some time now, but had always assumed the angel had a purely pragmatic approach to their relationship. That they were the one constant in each other’s equations, tying them together as peers, or, at best, colleagues. The only other soul on Earth that could fathom the feeling that stems from witnessing crusades, the rise and fall of empires, the lifecycle of cities as they grew from villages then fell to ruin. The camaraderie of someone who could understand the joy of watching the evolution of philosophy, art, and music, but also the utter despair of war and disease and cullings. The intricate and ephemeral symphony of an earth designed for mortals, viewed through immortal eyes.

In a sudden flash of realization, Crowley wonders how he ever thought that was an equation that provided an answer of _colleagues_.

He clears his throat and spares another quick glance at Icarus. “It seems a bit duller this time around,” he says quietly. “Must be farther away.”

He feels Aziraphale’s eyes on him before his voice floats into view. “I’ve always wondered if proximity was the only factor to its brightness.”

“Probably the main one.”

“What, er… other factors should one consider?” Aziraphale asks in that unusually pale voice. Less like the sky and more like a flower. Bluebells and forget-me-nots. A relaxed, whimsical color.

“Oh. Um. I dunno,” Crowley stammers. “Comets were— are tricky.”

“Trickier than— um, the rest of it?”

 _Yeah, angel, trickier than the rest of it. Trickier than moons and planets and nebulae. Trickier than stars. No one ever_ meant _to make a comet, they’re what happened when you screwed something up._

“It’s… hard to say,” Crowley says. “I can’t speak for everyone that ever made a comet.” He heaves a very small, very clipped sigh. “They’re pretty chaotic.”

_They’re what happens when you want too much. When you reach for more than you’re allowed and get burned for it._

“Not _entirely_ chaotic,” Aziraphale says. “This one returns to Earth like clockwork.”

“That’s not _its_ doing though. That’s all Sol pulling its strings. I’d bet you half the damned souls in Hades that its inception was a shit show.”

“So, you’re saying that no comet was ever made on purpose?” Aziraphale asks, tutting briefly at the sacrilege.

“Again. Can’t speak for everyone,” Crowley says. The implied, _but I can speak for myself_ hangs heavy in the sea air. “But not as far as I know. A comet is like… spilled ink.”

Aziraphale hums out a small sigh, then falls silent.

“How long have you been in Ostia anyway?” Crowley asks, hoping his attempt to pull the conversation away from the heavens isn’t too obvious. “Seems like an odd choice when Rome is just up the road.”

“Not long. Only fifty years or so.” Aziraphale says, ignoring Crowley’s poorly stifled snort of laughter. “I find it’s much easier to go unnoticed in a place where no one stays for long.”

“Not much here, though. I can’t believe you haven’t gotten bored.”

“There’s enough. For now anyway,” Aziraphale replies. “The temples and shrines are… _interesting_ at the very least. There’s the theatre, and you’d be surprised how much gets performed here.” He takes a thoughtful breath and lets his eyes wander down from the sky and out to the west. “There’s the sea,” he says softly, the faintest glint of silver flashing through his voice. He stares silently into space for an agonizingly long second before returning to himself with a small shrug. “Head office will eventually have more important work for me, but in the meantime, it’s actually been quite a nice break.”

Crowley reaches back through his memory bank, fumbling for any kind of response to the surreal notion of Aziraphale speaking wistfully of _the sea_ of all things. He surfaces with calming memories of Athens, the only place where he’s ever been able to draw jasmine out of Aziraphale. “I don’t suppose you ever get Aristophanes through this little theatre,” he says with the smallest smile.

“Oh, naturally,” Aziraphale scoffs. “People _still_ can’t get enough of _The Clouds_. Still!”

“To be fair, it’s very funny.”

“It’s _morbid_. No one’s interest in that play is innocent, I assure you.”

“There’s power in comedy, Aziraphale.”

“You _would_ say that. I suppose you’ll be speaking to the health benefits of hemlock next.”

“Oh, now there’s an idea, I bet I could really market it,” Crowley laughs. “ _Demon_ , remember?” he adds in response to Aziraphale’s horrified expression.

“Indeed,” Aziraphale mutters, his eyes darting furtively over Crowley’s features.

“Alright, if comedy is too morbid for you, what rays of sunshine _have_ you been taking in at the theatre?”

“It’s funny you should mention the Athenians. Just last week a troupe put on a production of _Seven Against Thebes,_ ” he says dreamily.

“A tragedy, I take it?”

Aziraphale nods. “Aeschylus, in fact.”

“I… didn’t realize anyone still, um. Appreciated him.”

“There will always be people to appreciate the classics,” Aziraphale says with an emphatic sniff. “But no, he’s not as popular as he once was. So much of his work has been lost.”

_Bloody hellfire and holy water I’m not going to get a better opportunity than this if I wait a thousand years._

Before he has time to think about it too deeply, he reaches into his robe and pulls out the scroll. He looks down at it in his hands for a moment before holding it out to Aziraphale. “Less of it’s lost than you’d think,” he says with a sideways grin that he hopes looks casual.

Aziraphale stares at it for a moment as though it might bite him before slowly reaching out and accepting the scroll. He unfurls the edge of it carefully, frowning as he holds it up to the comet's light to read the title. His eyes go wide.

“Crowley, what— _How_?” he asks breathlessly, his voice pale and bright.

“I had some time to kill in Alexandria a while back,” Crowley says with a shrug. “Nicked it from the library.”

“The li— A _while back_?”

“I had nothing to do with the fire, if that’s what that look means,” Crowley says as Aziraphale’s eyes bore holes into him. “That was Caesar having piss for brains, from how I understand it.”

“Then when—”

“Before. Well before.”

“The diaspora of the scholars?” Aziraphale asks. He stares numbly at the scroll in his hands, the hue of his voice slowly darkening.

“Believe it or not, that wasn’t me either. _That_ was Physcon having piss for brains,” Crowley says, rolling his eyes and scratching the back of his head. “Although now that I’m thinking about it, I probably should have taken credit for that. I bet they would have loved that one downstairs. A real poetic foil for the Tower of Babel.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale says softly, his voice passing through its normal, baseline blue and becoming something darker. Something new. He lifts his eyes to meet Crowley’s gaze as the familiar feeling of a gossamer strand threading between them manifests. The buzz of the crowd around them fades as it pulls taut. Crowley focuses on the new color in surprise. “ _When?_ ”

“Um. Before all of that. I was honestly just there killing time. Messing with the Pinakes, switching letters and numbers around, you— you know?” Crowley says thickly. Aziraphale’s eyes on his are trained on him with a bright intensity, searching his features in a way that makes Crowley feel like a book, written in a language that Aziraphale can almost grasp. “I saw Aeschylus on the books and… remembered you liked him.” He decides to leave out the part about knowing exactly which play Aziraphale was missing, or how he had filed away a throwaway comment made about Achilles almost four hundred years ago.

“So you’re telling me,” Aziraphale says slowly, the shade of his voice deepening with every syllable, resonating along the invisible thread as though it were a plucked lyre string, “that you’ve just been _holding onto this_ for a hundred and fifty years?”

“Um. Yes?”

“My dear fellow,” Aziraphale breathes. The shifting color of his voice bottoms out at the word _dear,_ settling into a dark, bold blue. A deep sapphire color. A color that feels like staring into the depths of a very deep, very clear ocean. “ _Thank_ you.” He drops his eyes back to the scroll in his hands, the delicate thread snapping and drifting away like smoke as he does.

“Don’t, um… don’t mention it, angel,” Crowley stammers. The shock of the thread breaking pulls him back to himself and he flicks his eyes up to glance at the comet. “Really, it was nothing. Forgot I even had the thing in my pocket.”

“All the same,” Aziraphale continues in his new jewel-toned voice. “And _don’t_ expect me to say this again any time soon, but I’m very glad you decided to steal from a library.” The ethereal smell of jasmine drifts into the air as he speaks, mingling pleasantly with the earthborn scent of the sea. Even if he couldn’t smell the smile, he still would have been able to hear Aziraphale speaking around it. “Are you certain you don’t want any of this?” he adds, nudging the cloth with the orange slices on it in Crowley’s direction.

“I’m sure,” Crowley says, dropping his eyes back to the crowd, watching Aziraphale’s smile with all of his senses except sight. It’s a strange comfort, similar to knowing the stars still burn even when he’s not able to see them.

It feels like faith, or at least what Crowley remembers of faith. A distant memory of a much simpler time. He breathes deeply of the fragrant air and allows himself to bask in the dizzying feeling of friendship.

“Suit yourself,” Aziraphale says, and pops an orange slice in his mouth.


	7. A falling leaf that has caught the air

**Backrun,** _noun_.  
(also called: blossoms, ozzles, or halos)

A blurred effect in watercolor painting, created when an excess of moisture wicks paint unevenly through the paper.

The technique can be used intentionally to create mottled color, a feeling of foliage, or the appearance of uneven lighting conditions, but there is no easy way to stop a backrun once it has started.

* * *

** Rome - 41 AD **

_Let me tempt you,_ he had said, all pastel blue and smelling of jasmine and casual as anything. As though an _angel_ approaching a _demon_ at a _bar_ and inviting him out to a dinner of fucking _aphrodisiacs_ was the most normal thing on the blessed planet.

Crowley had accepted the invitation without question. To question would have given Aziraphale time to _consider,_ which would surely have made him come to his senses and scamper away. He’d also just been too shocked to turn it down. Besides getting drunk as a lord, Aziraphale’s company was the only thing capable of taking his mind off the disaster at the palace.

The “quick temptation” Hell had sent him here to do had gotten so out of hand so quickly that he wonders if he had even been necessary at all. Humans had so much _potential_ for originality and imagination. Except when they didn’t.

Caligula had been a particularly boring and _boorish_ case. He had barely prodded the emperor’s pride and already the wretched man has plans to abandon his people and chase delusions of _godhood_. And already the sea of senators and guards around him is starting to boil with plots and conspiracies.

Hell will be thrilled. Crowley just feels tired.

Or at least, he _had_ felt tired. Lounging across from Aziraphale in a dimly lit corner of a popina where Aziraphale seems to know everyone is a jolt to the senses, to say the least. Crowley had been perfectly content with his plans to tuck into a jug of house brown in the dingy pub, staring into space and trying to forget his own name. But somehow the watery ale had become Rome’s finest wine, the rickety stool had become plush cushions at his back, and the empty space had been filled with an angel who can’t stop shooting his jasmine-laden smile in Crowley’s direction as he talks about _The Satyricon_ in a blissful sky blue voice.

It’s enough to give the heart whiplash. Not that Crowley’s complaining.

“These are new,” Aziraphale says, tapping at his temple. His voice is still the pale, _let me tempt you_ blue and Crowley is finding it difficult to focus on anything besides the color of it.

He pushes the glasses a little farther up his nose, trying to imagine them as a buffer between his eyes and Aziraphale’s voice. “Oh, uh. Yeah. Makes it easier to be around humans.”

“The hair too,” Aziraphale muses distractedly, selecting a grape from the dish of fruit between them. “ _Extraordinarily_ strange to see you with short hair.”

Crowley picks up his wine and tries to hide a huff in his cup. “Again. Humans,” he manages. “The job is easier if I can blend in.”

“Mm. Well, it suits you. The, erm… _contraption_ will take a bit of getting used to,” Aziraphale says, gesturing to his temples again, “but it suits you.”

Before Crowley can generate an intelligent response to the implication that Aziraphale intends to linger long enough to _get used to_ him, the angel pops the grape into his mouth and sends another rush of jasmine across the table at him.

 _What the heaven_ happened _in the past eight years?_

He sips at his wine instead, and is saved from further comments on his appearance when Aziraphale turns his attention to the server returning and setting new dishes between them— salads made of delicate greens and peppered with orange and yellow flower buds and petals. “Oh _wonderful_ , thank you, Valeria,” he breathes, beaming at the girl. “Petronius has been experimenting again, I take it?”

Crowley raises an eyebrow and leans back to watch the comfortable exchange over the lip of his cup.

“Always,” she replies, returning his smile. “He’d never forgive me if I let you leave without trying his newest creation. ”

“Flowers are his new fascination, then? Interesting.”

“Oh yes, it’s a regular flower garden in here these days,” she laughs. “It’s amazing how many flowers you can _eat_. You just missed roses and pansies, I’m afraid, but you’re here in time for marigolds.”

They exchange a few more pleasantries—chuckles and conspiratorial nods passing between them like a coded language—and then she drifts away from the table again.

“I see you’re blending in as well as ever,” Crowley smirks.

Aziraphale scoffs softly. “If you’re referring to Athens—”

“Simply reflecting on how _ardently_ you embody your role as humanity’s patron.”

“I can’t very well help them if I don’t understand them, now can I?” Aziraphale says, turning the plate in front of him to examine the colorful dish from every angle. His voice sounds almost prim, but the pale, whimsical color of it betrays any annoyance he is trying to feign. “They can be quite charming, humans. Very _inventive_. You should try getting to know them sometime.”

There’s a tightening in Crowley’s chest at that, as Aziraphale effortlessly and unknowingly pulls control of the conversation away from him once more. Memory rustles in him, like the pages of an open book fluttering apart in a breeze— a flash of smuggling children onto the Ark, of doing everything in his power to rally the people of Sodom, of trying to talk some _sense_ into Jesus. Of trying to _get to know them_ , only to end up holding frustration and anger, and when that had faded, the inevitable ache of loss.

_I showed him all the kingdoms of the world and it changed nothing…_

“Right,” he croaks, then clears his throat. Aziraphale glances up at him with a confused frown as Crowley puts a Herculean effort into pushing the swell of emotions back down. “I’m sure there would be some free oysters in it for me. Which, by the way—” he says gesturing across the table with his cup, “weren’t oysters the whole point of coming here?”

“It’s never _just_ oysters with Petronius. That’s part of what makes it so interesting here,” Aziraphale says, turning his attention back to the spread in front of them. He picks up one of the marigold buds and twirls it slowly between his fingers before nibbling at a petal. “Oysters are the main course, but you can’t rush these—” he trails off and jerks his eyes up to Crowley, then frowns again and stares down at the flower in his hand.

“Remarkable things with marigolds too?” Crowley asks, after a few heartbeats of Aziraphale being lost in thought.

“What? No! I mean, yes!” Aziraphale laughs nervously, shaking himself from a daze. He puts the rest of the flower in his mouth and holds it there for a moment before beginning to chew. “It’s… not what I expected, is all,” he says.

Crowley plucks a flower off his own plate and peers at it suspiciously. “What the heaven did you _expect_?”

“Nasturtium, I think,” Aziraphale says dreamily, rotating his plate again. “For all I expected anything. Or some preparation of saffron. Marigold simply never crossed my mind. Are you— going to try it?” he asks, smiling at Crowley in a way that he can only describe as _hopeful_.

Crowley stares dumbly across the table at him— trying to think around the haze of jasmine, trying to parse Aziraphale’s bizarre response, trying to pull together the fragmented bursts of the day’s events into any kind of cohesive whole. He had been at the palace earlier, he’s sure of that much. Sent to tempt an emperor to pride. Or was it greed? Wrath? Head office has always been a little shaky on the _how_ of things, and he’s finding it exceptionally difficult to care in this moment.

_Doesn’t really matter, I suppose. The bastard blurred the lines and muddied the waters all on his own. And now—somehow—I’m here. There was some twist in the path that took me from Caligula’s ear to Aziraphale’s smile, but I’ll be blessed before I’m able to draw that map._

He twirls the marigold absentmindedly between his fingers, mirroring Aziraphale’s movement from earlier.

“Perhaps just a petal?” Aziraphale prods. “I’m quite curious to hear what you think.”

A small grin settles on Crowley’s face at the idea of the angel of the eastern gate persuading the serpent of Eden to take a bite of a flower, but decides against voicing this particular amusement. Instead, he lifts the marigold and pulls a frilled petal free with his teeth.

It’s a delicate, subdued sensation that spreads through his mouth: a crisp, green flavor with a vaguely floral perfume behind it, chased by a gentle spice tingling across his tongue. The sharpness of it mingles curiously with the sweet smell of the ethereal jasmine, causing another rustle in his center. It’s not quite a memory stirring in him this time, but it feels adjacent to it. Something closer to familiarity. As the smell of jasmine and the taste of marigold bleed into each other, they prod at something inside him that feels like whimsy. A feeling of wonder and ease and optimism.

He swallows and comes back to himself. “Huh,” he says.

“Well?”

“It’s… peppery?” he says, trying to grasp the depth of the feeling, but finds it already out of his reach. “Hell of a thing.”

Aziraphale lets out a breath that falls somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. “Indeed. Prickly.”

“Why saffron though?” Crowley asks. He puts the rest of the flower in his mouth and bites down on it, holding the bud between his teeth as he chases after the bizarre whimsy again.

“Hmm?”

“You said you thought it would taste like saffron.”

“Did I?”

Crowley laughs around his mouthful of marigold. “Yeah, angel. _Some preparation of saffron_ ,” he teases, slipping into an exaggeration of Aziraphale’s accent.

“Oh. Right, er— that,” Aziraphale stammers. “The um… color is similar.”

Crowley snorts out another laugh. “By that logic, it could taste like an orange. Or a carrot. Or _salmon_. Or…” He swallows the marigold, and feels the small twinkle of playfulness fade back into the background. “Or— just a flower.” _Hell of a thing._

By the time Valeria returns with a tray of oysters, Crowley has picked every petal and bud out of the salad and grinned his way through his share of the wine, Aziraphale eclipsing thoughts of Caligula with a coy jasmine smile and peals of periwinkle laughter. It’s deeply comfortable. Profoundly comforting. A rhythm they fall into easily, as if this is how things have always been. As though this has been the shape of the world all along, and their eyes are finally adjusting enough to take it in.

Valeria glances at Crowley and gives Aziraphale a sly smile as she sets the tray down, murmurs something about a fresh jug of wine, and makes her way back to the counter.

Six oysters—raw, glistening, and in their shells—are arranged on the tray in a semicircle around a sliced lemon and a small ceramic pitcher of sauce. Crowley wrinkles his nose.

“So… when you said Petronius did _remarkable things to oysters_ ,” he says, leaning away from the plate, “you failed to mention that he doesn’t actually _cook_ the oysters.”

“Heavens, no! You would lose all the liquor that way.”

“Liquor.” Crowley blinks. “ _Oyster_ liquor.”

“The natural juices,” Aziraphale says earnestly, rotating the plate to examine it from all sides as he had the salad.

“You want me to eat _raw oysters_ after you’ve used the words _oyster liquor_ and _natural juices_ to describe them.”

“The lemon should help take the edge off if you’re feeling squeamish about it.”

“You do realize,” Crowley says, crossing his arms and leaning back farther, “that this is the single _worst_ temptation I have ever been exposed to.”

“Oh, come now, surely not,” Aziraphale tuts, then flushes with an embarrassed smile. “And who said anything about temptation?”

“ _You_ did! Your words, angel!”

“I seem to recall my words being something along the lines of temptation being _your_ job,” he says, sounding demure but radiating a playful powder blue.

He picks up one of the shells and wafts it under his nose, savoring the smell with closed eyes. “ _Marvelous_ ,” he sighs decadently, then tips the meat into his mouth.

Crowley feels heat creep up his neck and into his ears as he watches him chew slowly, eyes closed and blissfully lost in the hedonism of it all. When Aziraphale places the pad of his thumb between his lips and sucks at a dribble of liquor, Crowley finally drops his eyes to the tray and reaches for an oyster, desperate for any distraction.

He mirrors Aziraphale at first, moving the shell in a circular motion in front of his face, breathing in the sharp tang of the sea. Even though he had been braced for it, inhaling the smell of Airaphale’s distress while watching delight and decadence dance across his features is a shock to the senses. The brackish smell that joins the jasmine mixes in a way that serves to be remarkably grounding— stabilizing rather than turbulent. Bracing himself for a second shock, he lifts the shell to his mouth and tips his head back.

Where the marigold had been subtle, this is anything but. The sea floods his mouth. Rich brine that deepens to an almost metallic sweetness when he bites down. Something akin to longing blossoms in him with the flavor— the feeling of being very small, but instead of a sense of insecurity, it drags an aura of safety with it. Of being surrounded and protected. He chews once on each side of his mouth, then lets the oyster slide down his throat, the feeling fading with the aftertaste.

He laughs weakly and shakes himself out of his daze to see Aziraphale staring at him with an expectant smile.

“ _Remarkable_ seems a bit dramatic,” Crowley says, tapping the empty shell against the knuckles of his free hand, “but I suppose I can see what the fuss is about.”

Aziraphale simply laughs into his cup, causing a small eddy of periwinkle and jasmine to swirl around Crowley.

They work their way through the rest of the oysters, and Crowley finds himself trying to pin down the nebulous swell of emotion that comes with _tasting_ the sea he’s grown so accustomed to smelling. The salt and the umami tang in his mouth leaves him feeling adrift, but free. Physical reality, smell memory, and synesthesia begin to bleed together, approaching him like a wave of anxiety, but calming to a misting of awe by the time it reaches him. Each time the wine tips him gently towards drunkenness, the liquor pulls him back to lucidity.

The rhythm of colors and smells and flavors deepens as the night wears on.

Aziraphale tells him about his time spent in Rome since they saw each other last, and how he’s come to appreciate humanity’s transitory wonder in new ways since the crucifixion— pursuing a sense of community, embracing culture with a new gusto, becoming a better guardian by learning to understand their roots.

In turn, Crowley finds himself speaking openly and honestly with Aziraphale for the first time, voicing his boredom with Hell’s methods, his irritation with the humans in power using their endless imaginations for the most _uninspired_ ventures, the unsettling feeling that humans tend to be better at his job than he is.

The smell of flowers and wine clouds his mind through it all, and the world becomes haloed in blue and periwinkle and sapphire. Slowly, the people and the popina seem to disappear, edged out by peppery whimsy, briny strength, and more jasmine than Crowley would have thought possible.

Valeria occasionally floats through the floral cloud, appearing in Crowley’s vision with the colors of Aziraphale’s voice swirling around her like smoke, offering a joke or a smile or a fresh jug of wine. Crowley comes to find her presence almost soothing— the one stable element capable of drifting across the border of this liminal space, serving as a reminder that, yes, they are still on Earth, and no, he has not drifted into a dream.

The popina has mostly emptied around them by the time he focuses his attention on anything besides Aziraphale. In a rush, he becomes aware of the the quiet, the cold night air flowing in, the darkness outside the window. He gives his head a shake and tries to make sense of it.

“Huh. Got late,” he says.

Aziraphale looks around the room as though seeing it for the first time. “Oh. Goodness, I suppose it did.” He shoots Valeria a sheepish smile.

Crowley feels his mind sluggishly trying to break through the other side of the daze as he gathers himself and follows Aziraphale outside. He’s wondering where they are going, if he should follow, if he could stop himself even if he shouldn’t— when Aziraphale stumbles in the middle of an animated recounting of _Cena Trimalchionis_ , throws out a hand, and steadies himself on Crowley’s shoulder.

Instinct takes over as the world starts to shimmer. He moves to catch Aziraphale, lifting a hand and placing it firmly between his shoulders, sealing the link between them. The daze he had been trying to exit grabs him and pulls him back into the center of it.

The smell of it comes first— something he has only smelled one other time, while locked in a handshake with Aziraphale on the wall of Eden. A scent he has spent four thousand years rationalizing away.

Apples.

The sweet, crisp scent of apples, at once common and completely unique, spikes into his awareness. It's apples, yes, but it's also something more. Something almost floral, but wholly unlike the jasmine he's grown accustomed to. It's the ghost of turned earth. A suggestion of mulch.

Mirages come next. The depth of the smell brings images floating into Crowley's periphery. Blurry shapes and colors that shimmer and dissolve the second he tries to focus on them, as fragile as a soap bubble.

Too foreign to be memories. Too tangible to be dreams.

Stories, perhaps.

Or perhaps just subconscious connotations. Ideals and wishes. The mind can bury truly extraordinary things after all, and Crowley’s has had four thousand years to dig.

He is distantly aware of the sensation of touch, buried somewhere beneath the other layers, but physical contact is just the base. It’s the guiding percussion under a symphony. The canvas that holds a portrait.

It all hangs around him in hazy harmonies. Attempting to focus on any one facet without the context of the others makes so little sense that he isn't sure it can even be done. The idea that Aziraphale's touch carries the smell of apples fits into his worldview as an obvious truth, blooming in his mind like a new color. He is aware of it like the weight of sunlight on his skin. Like wind through an orchard.

Simply the way of things.

Crowley stares at Aziraphale over the top of his glasses, not bothering to blink, forgetting to breathe, somehow smelling jasmine and apples anyway. Aziraphale stares back at him with wide eyes, his mouth slightly open and the color in his wine-flushed cheeks deepening. With an awkward puff of too-loud laughter, he gives Crowley’s shoulder a gentle squeeze and pulls his hand back slowly. The giddy urge to lean into the hand and maintain the contact rushes through Crowley. A desperate desire to _stay_. Whatever this fairy tale grove of apple trees is—a hallucination or a wish or even just too much wine—leaving it feels like the most foolish thing imaginable.

But he fights it anyway. He forces himself back from Aziraphale, the smell of apples and dreamlike thoughts of a wild orchard diffusing into the cool night air as he does. His heart thuds back to life, kicking like a trapped rabbit in his chest.

“Two left feet, I’m afraid,” Aziraphale says shakily.

“Right. Yes. Wine goes— right to the feet,” says Crowley.

They continue their path through the streets, the sharp chill of the night air almost painful where it collides with his flushed skin. Crowley’s thoughts seem to float above him as they walk, looking down on his situation from above. It’s a vantage point that shows him a new lay of an old land, the forest as well as the trees, the dips and craggy peaks of a topography he’s only ever known up close.

The thread is visible from up here— the thread that drew him to the top of the wall in Eden, that pulled his feet across a room in Athens, that passed a gift between them in Ostia. It twines comfortably between them, this ancient and singular connection of theirs. It’s an angel sheltering a demon with his wing. An angel embracing a demon’s artistry and offering him a paintbrush. An angel understanding and accepting the importance of names without question.

Aziraphale not just choosing his company, but delighting in it. Commiserating and conversing and wanting to _share_ with him.

The above-it-all part of Crowley watches one terrifying truth skip across the surface of him like a stone over a lake, improbable and cocksure, held above the waterline by some unholy combination of surface tension and stubbornness. It watches the stone’s doomed path with an interest that borders on clinical, as he makes meaningless banter with Aziraphale, desperate to fill the air with _something_ , afraid to stop moving, giddy and drunk on more than just wine. It observes his feet moving mechanically, nods approvingly when he manages to keep his voice from warbling, frowns curiously at the flood of adrenaline when jasmine and periwinkle light up the air.

Then they part ways at a fork in the road and Aziraphale walks towards whatever rooms he’s been keeping, leaving a floral silhouette behind him like a ghost.

And Crowley feels the outside piece of himself come crashing back down. The stone loses its momentum and drops into the water, sinking into the deepest and most irretrievable place within him to become a part of the lakebed.

_Shit._

_Damn it, bless it, curse it._

The ripples expand, touch the shore, reverberate back to their point of origin.

_I can’t be in love with Aziraphale. I cannot._

_Fuck._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [swirling up without a care](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kch3IvQMrS0)


	8. Towers to the skies

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A bit of a dark chapter. We won't linger here, but mind the tags and take care of #1. <3
> 
> Edit for specific cws: this chapter contains depictions of plague, pandemic, and child death.

**Constantinople - 541 AD**

There is a moment—a burning, selfish moment that rushes by Aziraphale in less time than it takes to blink—when he considers turning off his sense of smell. It would be a quick miracle, barely a thought, really, and he would be relieved of the cursed _stink_ of it all. The ever-present reminder of death and rot and, above all, _hopelessness_. The thought enters his mind, whispers its quick temptation, and is immediately ejected, a pang of shame inching in to replace it.

 _You’ll never understand, never empathize, never be able to help_ , _if you don’t know every facet of what they are going through,_ he scolds himself. _You’re no good to humanity if you can’t understand._

But there's the rub. He does understand their pain, but the ability to _help_ isn’t something he has. Not anymore. Not since Sandalphon had caught wind of what he was doing and reprimanded him for _frivolous miracles._ A flash of anger stabs through him at the memory, white and hot and painful. Aziraphale grits his teeth against it and pushes his chair back from the desk. The sound of wood scraping on stone echoes loudly through the ward as he stands, making him painfully aware of how _alone_ he is here.

Of just how few people are left.

He pinches the bridge of his nose and takes a few deep breaths, drawing the horrible smell of death and disease into him, the sickly sweet edge to it making his eyes water. Then he steels himself and heads to the tower where the scholar’s tools are kept.

The principality may be helpless against this storm, but the chronicler can at least offer a semblance of solace. A sword might be a useless tool against a plague, but it’s not the only tool he knows. He can observe, he can record, and he can watch. He can stay with them when no one else will, hold their hands as they lie terrified, delirious, and dying, and give them his unwavering attention.

He can promise that they will be remembered.

* * *

Aziraphale has been through cullings, each one a new way to test his resolve. The Flood had been horrible, but once the waters rose above the towns, he was spared much of the fallout from his position on the Ark. Sodom had been devastating, but it had been over so quickly— life snuffed out before it had time to consider the pain. The cruel and ruinous plagues of Egypt had rewritten the concept of human suffering in his mind, but somehow, even that pales in comparison to whatever this monstrous illness is, tearing through the city with brutal efficiency.

Forbidden from helping in any tangible way, Aziraphale opts to open a ledger and _record_. To fight efficiency with efficiency. It had started as highly technical observations of the illness—the size and color of the buboes, their location on the body, the smell, and, even more unsettling, the _sound_ they made. The percentage of patients who also developed the dark, mottled rash, the blackened limbs, the bloody cough. The short lifespan of the human after that.

But there are only so many grisly observations one can make before the data is too repetitive to offer new insight, and so he had found new information to record. Population demographics had come first. They type of people the plague affected. This, unfortunately, seemed to be everyone, but Aziraphale had recorded them regardless. It had taken him less than a week to develop a complex cipher and system of shorthand for marking down patients, recording them rapidly and in as much detail as possible. He had become so adept at mapping out each person that he had eventually found that he was able to commit _all_ of the monestary’s patients to the memory of history.

In fact, his methods are _so_ efficient that he soon finds he has time on his hands once again. Time he is desperate to let the chronicler fill.

So he begins recording their stories. Names and occupations. Where they live. Their hobbies and favorite foods. Those who are able to talk, he distracts from their death as best he can by asking them about their lives. For the ones who can no longer speak, he becomes the storyteller instead of the listener.

Of the most recent wave of plague victims, there is currently one listener left. Aziraphale sighs as he settles into the chair beside the bed, holding his ledger in his lap. The girl in the bed takes a wet, ragged breath but does not open her eyes. The illness had spread to her lungs yesterday morning. Aziraphale knows it is, at best, a matter of hours now.

He pitches his voice into a soft tenor, one much like he knows her father’s had been, as he murmurs, “Hello, Hortensia.” It’s not a miracle in his voice. Not quite. There’s no cure there, simply comfort. Instead of healing, Aziraphale has taken all of his angelic grace and poured it into a deeply human vessel. He offers it to her like a cup of water.

She stirs slightly, a wet rattle falling from her throat as she turns toward the sound of his voice. The image of a flower trying desperately and futilely to reach the light flashes through Aziraphale’s mind at the sight, and a distant sort of grief rings in him, low and sonorous. He’s watched thousands—tens of thousands—of people waste away from this illness. Her parents had expired the day before, her older brother this morning, her uncle mere hours later. She won’t be the first child he’s watched die. There’s nothing unique about her whatsoever. Still, he feels his heart break open.

He’s felt his heart break open tens of thousands of times now.

But Aziraphale can’t bear the thought that the last thing this child might see before her light fades from the world is a grief-stricken stranger. He takes a breath full of rot and sorrow, and reaches within himself to grip his resolve, clutching his grace like a talisman.

“It’s a lovely day, my dear,” he says in his clear, melodious voice. “Hardly a cloud in the sky, the sun shining bright as anything. You wouldn’t believe how many birds are in the air.”

She opens her eyes halfway and stares at him through a haze of fever, her breath shallow and defeated. With a movement that seems akin to moving a mountain, she twitches her hand across the bed toward Aziraphale, her plague-bruised knuckles refusing to unfold all the way. The disease has set her skin alight, and he knows that even the weight of the blanket had been too heavy for her. The last thing she should want right now is to be touched, but somehow, in that terribly inconvenient way that humans have, the only thing she seems to need is a hand to hold.

It’s not any miracle worth noting that he works into his hand. It’s not healing or manifesting matter from the ether or anything that would set off an alarm upstairs. If anything, it will be seen as a minor environmental change—a shift in temperature or humidity—and the miracle will be shrugged into the backroom of the archives to be forgotten along with every cup of tea Aziraphale has ever miracled warm. As he slides his hand across the bed to enclose hers, he wills a subtle numbing tingle to flow from his fingers into hers, and holds her hand without hurting her.

She closes her eyes at the touch, taking a few more inadequate breaths before whispering, “Book?”

Aziraphale’s eyes drop to the book in his lap. “Ah,” he murmurs. “It’s stories, dear. I’ve been writing all of your stories down.”

“Why?”

“Everyone deserves to be remembered. You’re all so bright and beautiful and I just want… I want to make sure future generations know.”

“Tell me… someone else’s?” she manages eventually, opening her eyes the smallest sliver. “Stories. Not… this one.”

Somehow, he smiles at her. He smiles because it’s his job and he is here to help and this is what she needs. But he also smiles because he feels an unexpected spark of kinship with her, something painfully rare in mortals and even less expected in one so young. Giving her hand a gentle squeeze, he says, “Of course, dear,” and casts a line back into his memory.

The myth of Achilles and Patroclus surfaces, along with all the other Greek plays he loves so much. He runs his thoughts quickly over all the volumes stored in his mind; millennia of myths and legends, fairy tales and folklore, poetry and prose all drift in and out of his mind’s eye, but none of them seem right.

What story do you tell a dying child? What story could possibly be good enough if you know it will be your last?

In the end, he opts for one that no human has ever gotten to hear. He tells her a true story. He holds her hand, wills every soothing fiber of his angelic essence into the smile he gives her, and he tells her about the comet.

He tells her how an angel had made it, thousands of years ago. Filling in the gaps in his knowledge as best he can and adding some embellishments of his own, he weaves a tale about a starmaker named Patroclus, painting the heavens and accidentally spilling his ink, the mistake becoming something more graceful and awe-inspiring than could have ever been planned. A shooting star that speeds endlessly around the sun— rebellious, reckless, lighting up Earth’s skies every seventy six years as it soars by. When he tells her that the last time it visited Earth was the year she had been born, making her _a comet-blessed child_ , he swears he sees the faint ghost of a smile pass over her face.

Reaching even further back in his memory, he pulls up knowledge from a time when the solar system was being built. The comet becomes an adventurer on an epic quest as he speaks, losing itself in the labyrinth of Jupiter’s moons, stopping to admire the rings of Saturn, being pulled into a slow dance as it loops around the hypnotizing blue of Neptune. Then it turns around and rushes through it all again.

A traveller, proud and blazing. Illogical and defiant. A radiant soul made wondrous _because_ of its flaws, not _in spite_ of them.

By the time Aziraphale finishes his story, Hortensia has stopped breathing.

* * *

He doesn’t know how long he sits beside her bed, clutching the book and staring into the cold, silent darkness of the empty ward. There are no more patients, no one who needs him in this moment, no more ledgers to fill— so he sits and tries to think of nothing. Tomorrow, there may be more people, assuming there is anyone left in the city alive enough to fall ill. It’s been so long since he stepped outside the makeshift hospital that, for all he knows, the girl beside him had been the last living human in all of Constantinople.

Night falls outside the window. He registers dully that it has at least been hours since she passed. He supposes it’s possible that it’s been days. Time is a difficult thing to consider without the presence of mortals to gauge it against.

But it isn’t a mortal that finally pulls him out of his morbid reverie.

Somewhere, a door creaks open. A pocket of guttering candlelight fills its frame, hovering briefly like a will-o’-the-wisp, before winding its way between the beds, coming to a halt in front of Aziraphale where it crouches on the floor in front of him.

He is aware of the voice speaking to him—he hears the familiar notes and overtones ringing around him, sees the glimmer of brassy concern flashing in it—but he doesn’t parse any of the words. Aziraphale raises his eyes to the serpentine yellow glinting in the candlelight, the sight of them without the obstruction of dark lenses pulling him back to himself.

“Hello, Crowley.”

Crowley’s voice is gentle when it finds him again. The bright brass takes on a complex layer of dark amber, a disorienting effect that, under different circumstances, Aziraphale might be more fascinated by. “Angel, what are you doing here?”

“I’m—” he looks down at the book in his lap, then to the dead girl beside him. “Helping,” he says, lifting his eyes back to Crowley. “I’m helping.”

“Aziraphale—”

“How did you find me?”

“You’re easy to find.”

Aziraphale frowns. “Crowley.” He tries to sound scolding, annoyed, angry— _anything_ other than the pleading tone his traitorous voice takes on.

“I’m serious. You know that thing you do? Where you hone in on love and happiness?” He speaks very slowly, his voice glinting like a beacon in the darkness. “Well I do the opposite. And you’re very loud. You’re _deafening_.” One small wave seems to hiss against a shore between them—the muted taste of brine and oysters rising in Aziraphale’s mouth with it—before receding back into Crowley. He closes his eyes and takes a breath of the sour air, a sea-soaked demon being more sensory information than he feels equipped to deal with in this moment.

“ _Why_ did you find me?” he asks, opening his eyes again.

“Have you considered,” Crowley says, his voice still soft and gentle, “that perhaps you’ve helped them all you can?” He spares a glance to the side, a pained look flickering over his face as he takes in the small figure on the bed.

Aziraphale glares at him and pushes himself up from the chair, fumbling with his books and quills. Mechanically, he begins to move in the direction of the desk at the far end of the room.

_Stay moving. Stay busy. Engage your mind. If you stop then you have to actually confront all this. A demon speaking sense and compassion while the Archangels turn a blind eye._

“Aziraphale. Angel, wait,” Crowley leaps to his feet and, leaving the candle sitting on the floor, rushes around to stand in front of him, nostrils flaring. “ _Please_.” He lifts his hands to either side of Aziraphale’s shoulders, halting centimeters away from physical contact as though he could hold him in place by sheer force of will. “Talk to me.”

“About _what_ ,” Aziraphale snaps. “What would you like to _talk about_ , Crowley? Shall I tell you the extent of how useless I am here? Would you like to hear about the monks I came here to help and how I ended up piling all of their bodies in the streets? Or perhaps how I was curing people up until Heaven issued me a warning? Would you like to hear about how saving innocent lives— _children_ —from the most senseless and agonizing death I’ve ever seen is considered a _frivolous miracle_?”

The anger builds in him as he speaks, his voice growing louder and hotter with each word. Anger feels like the only useful weapon he has, and now that he has found it again, he clings to it like a lifeline. It’s not anger towards Crowley, and he prays that Crowley knows that, because he feels the dam threatening to break. When it does, any hold on logical conversation will be the first thing to be swept away in the flood.

He glowers at Crowley, chest heaving and eyes blazing. “ _Children_ , Crowley.”

“I know, angel.”

“It’s been thousands. Every day. We— _I_ only get a handful of them in here. _Thousands_.”

“I know,” Crowley says, his voice growing quieter. His hands don’t move from the air around Aziraphale— desperate to help but so careful not to touch him.

“I’ve been—” he looks at the book in his hands, then tosses it to the foot of the bed, suddenly disgusted with the macabre time capsule. “I’ve been writing them down. A pointless endeavor, but I’ve been doing it anyway.”

“Maybe it’s pointless right now,” Crowley says. The metallic sheen of his voice seems to wrap around Aziraphale like armor. The hands hovering above his arms feel like an offer to patch the cracks in the dam. Aziraphale wonders if it’s a temptation or just simple kindness, and of the two of those, which is worse. “But someone, someday will find a use for it.”

“Crowley, I—” he breaks off and stares down at the lifeless girl in the bed. “Her name was Hortensia,” he says weakly. “She asked for a story. Right before—”

With a great shuddering breath, Aziraphale looks up into Crowley’s eyes. This _impossible_ demon. This utter contradiction, staring down at him with compassion and sadness and everything that _shouldn’t_ be there. Crowley, with his marigold smile and his briny sorrow. His bright golden laugh and his touch like a sun-soaked vineyard. This beautiful and chaotic splash of spilled ink that rewrites the rules of the world merely by existing in it.

“I told her about the comet,” Aziraphale says, and lets the dam break.

It’s not the flood he was expecting. There’s no deluge of tears. Nothing crashes into him and knocks him off his feet. Instead of crumbling like a ruined tower, he simply sets down a burden. It’s a burden he will pick back up again, but for a brief, shining moment, trusting that Heaven and Hell are entirely too preoccupied to pay attention, he lets himself forget. Setting faith and righteousness and ineffability aside, he drops his forehead to Crowley’s shoulder, and, feeling the hands hovering above him finally find purchase at his back, retreats into the vineyard.

Where the touch in Rome had been like falling into a dream, this is sunlight finding its way through a crack in a wall; a reminder of a simpler time, though he can’t define it beyond that. He closes his eyes against the cold darkness of the room, letting the taste of grapes drown out the smell of death, and he steals a moment for himself.

As he drifts in the surreal sensory landscape, he tells himself a story about a wild garden where grapevines grow alongside apple trees. A time before grapes were bound to trellises and apple trees were confined to orderly rows. A place where vine and bough mingle, the sun always shines, and the flowers always bloom. The earth reaches in through every door and window, every crack in every wall, to wrap ethereal threads around them and add to his story, whispering, _This too shall pass. You left the garden and found a world brimming with despair, but there is love here too. There is hope._

Aziraphale breathes. He takes the comfort offered to him and stores it like a shield, like armor, like a priceless treasure— readying himself to face the coming days.

“What did she think?” Crowley murmurs, his voice encircling them in a halo of brass.

“I don’t know,” Aziraphale says into Crowley’s shoulder, his voice cracking slightly. “She smiled though.”

A hint of marigold blooms into the complex garden of flavors, added to oysters and grapes like a spice. The secret ingredient that turns a meal into a delicacy.

“You can’t fight every battle, angel. You’ll drive yourself mad that way.”

“I have to try. Crowley, I _have_ to.”

Crowley sighs, but the steadying pressure at Aziraphale’s back doesn’t waver. The sea doesn’t surge. When Aziraphale finally takes a breath and pulls away, Crowley gathers the ledger from the foot of the bed and silently follows him to the desk.


	9. An academy of lies

** Bithynia - 837 AD **

“How the heaven was I supposed to know!” Crowley cries, throwing his hands in the air. His annoyance is a palpable brine at the back of Aziraphale’s throat, and a bright red starts to show through the rust color in Crowley’s voice.

“The man was a _monk_ , Crowley. He founded three monasteries. Three!” Aziraphale bites back, narrowing his eyes. “You didn’t stop to think that _maybe_ he was one of ours?”

“Demon, remember? Tempting the pure to stray from the path? Kind of my entire job _._ ”

“Hard to forget,” Aziraphale mutters. He turns away from Crowley and picks up his quill, giving his attention back to the stack of paperwork on the desk.

“Look, I didn’t know he was _yours_ yours,” Crowley hisses, pacing around the desk to stay in Aziraphale’s view. The red in his voice pulses in a shocking flare of emotion that Aziraphale isn’t sure how to interpret or respond to.

He slams the quill down on the desk and glares up into Crowley’s dark glasses. _Always hiding behind those damn glasses._ “Oh? Because there are _so many_ other angels operating on Earth?” he snaps, opting for sarcasm and immediately regretting it when the turbulent sensation of a sea at storm crashes around him. “He was marked for sainthood, and now—”

“Well _maybe_ , if you were ever willing to compare assignments we could avoid stepping on each other’s toes.”

“Absolutely out of the question,” Aziraphale says automatically. It’s not the first time they’ve had this argument, and Aziraphale’s protests are more muscle memory than anything at this point. He is an _angel_. There are _rules_. He has _standards_. Admitting to himself that Crowley has a point about their respective positions on Earth feels like a betrayal of all of those things. It’s a step in a direction that leads into uncharted terrain. A step away from what he is, and into the section of the map where sea monsters and dragons lurk.

“I’m not saying you should turn your back on Heaven,” comes Crowley’s exasperated reply. He lays his palms on the desk and leans over the gleaming stack of heavenly paperwork, peering at Aziraphale over the top of his black quartz lenses. He wrinkles his nose slightly, as though the paperwork were personally offensive. “I’d never do that. But stop and think about this for a minute. Really think about it. If we had just _talked_ about this one, then we both could have left the poor bastard alone. He might have ended up downstairs. Probably would have gone to your lot. Either way, he would have gone _somewhere_.”

Aziraphale sighs and leans back in the chair, rubbing his temples.

Peter of Atroa. By all rights, he should have been a shoo-in for Heaven and an easy job for Aziraphale. A few encouraging words, a handful of blessings, a nudge in the right direction once a decade or so. On a few occasions, he’d gone so far as to perform minor miracles through the man, securing his status as a pious instrument of the Almighty in the eyes of the people.

But as luck or fate or the Great Plan would have it, Peter of Atroa had been Crowley’s assignment too. And as _Crowley_ would have it, his methods of painting the man’s reputation had been very similar to Aziraphale’s.

The heavenly essence and demonic force of will mingling in one mortal soul had not gone over well with either side.

“Do we even know where he _is_?” Crowley asks, pushing off the desk and crossing his arms. He presses his back against the wall facing Aziraphale as though he’s trying to sink into the stone. “All I heard from Beelzebub was a lot of grumbling about not wanting a ‘heaven-blessed saint’ kicking up trouble and rallying the damned.

“Yes well, Gabriel was huffing about the corruption an ‘agent of Hell’ would cause and won’t give me much else until—” Aziraphale gestures at the paperwork in front of him and tuts with irritation. “I imagine Peter is just… somewhere in between in the meantime.”

“You have no idea either, do you?”

“It’s not _for_ me to know. It’s ineff—”

“Oh, come off it!” Crowley groans. The shocking red tint has faded from his voice, but the sharp edge of rust is still there, heavy and dangerous. “Aziraphale, this all could have been so _effable_.”

“I’m perfectly aware of where you stand on the matter,” Aziraphale says with a sniff. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I have a lost soul to try and secure sainthood for.”

Crowley throws his head back and lets out a growl of frustration. “Fine! Fine. I’ll see you around, angel.” Then he shoves off the wall and stalks out of the room, leaving Aziraphale alone with his papers.

* * *

In the colorless peace that follows, Aziraphale throws himself into the paperwork with his chronicler’s fervor. The forms are maddeningly monotonous, and the unique ‘lost soul’ problem makes for endlessly self-referencing loops. Each page he finishes seems to somehow create cascading footnotes and require a new department to be cross-referenced.

But it is at least something he knows. The chronicler tucked away at the most central part of him has absolute faith in the process; it’s boring, but it’s a comfort.

He uses all the resources available to him, Heaven allowing him some leeway with frivolous miracles in the light of all the paperwork. The rest of the day is spent leafing through records, deeds, and contracts, both earthly and divine. Anything he can conjure that could possibly trace back to Peter, he spreads across the desk and pores over.

In the end, Aziraphale doesn’t find an answer in Heaven’s endless forms and laws. He finds it in an earthly formality.

It’s a letter that finally seals the deal— penned some seventeen years ago, following the unpleasant business with the exorcism scandal, meticulously worded and wonderfully preserved. It had been written by another human—a studite and a saint—and Aziraphale immediately knows he’s cracked it.

The letter is a positively glowing defense of Peter’s character, addressed to all the monks and priests of the region. It includes a scathing review of the Iconoclasts, and a rejection of the demonic connections, but most importantly, it all comes from a mortal. By referencing a purely earthly source in his paperwork, he will effectively slam the door on the recursive heavenly departmental references. The fact that the source is a _saint_ means the Archangels can’t refute its legitimacy.

Just like that, the problem is solved. As soon as the forms are filed, Peter’s soul will be permitted into Heaven and this whole mess will be a thing of the past. The chronicler in Aziraphale hums with contentment at a job so thoroughly completed. The rest of him shifts uncomfortably at the implication of what he's accomplished. A problem had been presented to him, and he had massaged it until its shape became something more desirable. Something easier to handle. A loophole. He is about to throw open Heaven’s gates to welcome a soul which demonic magicks had been channeled through, and he’s going to do it on a _technicality_.

Gabriel will be furious. Gabriel probably _should_ be furious.

But… this isn’t just any demon he’s dealing with here. It’s not like he’s giving Satan a way into Heaven or Beelzebub an agent on the inside. This is _Crowley_. Crowley who would set a rumor about a corrupt merchant to smolder through a town and try to play off the karmic aftermath as ‘ _a coincidence, angel, just meeting my quota, the bastard was in the wrong place at the wrong time.'_ Who seems to collect urchins and orphans in every town he’s stationed in, claiming his reasons for feeding and sheltering them are ‘ _purely demonic, corrupt ‘em while they’re young and vulnerable, making new boots on the ground_.’

Crowley who had stayed by Aziraphale’s side in Constantinople for three days as new waves of patients rolled through the ward. Who had kept a silent watch over Aziraphale, ever close as if he were ready to catch him again, working alongside him at the horrid task of stacking the bodies. The demon who had distracted a sick child from the horrors of the world with stories about the stars, told in a low, conspiratorial voice when he thought Aziraphale couldn’t hear. If it hadn’t been for the marigolds dancing through his mouth, chased by the sorrowful bite of oysters and brine, Aziraphale probably _would_ have missed it.

His brows knit together at the memory. It’s a complex and multi-faceted thing— grief from one angle, anger from another, tenderness when the light catches it just right. Aziraphale has never known quite how to hold it, so most of the time he doesn’t try to. When left as a single tile in the mosaic of memory, it almost makes sense, but if he tries to isolate it and examine it without context, he starts to feel his edges fray.

He pushes back from the desk and wanders to the window, his thoughts still lingering on the minor chord struck by marigolds and the sea. Night has fallen, although there is still a curious amount of activity in the normally sleepy streets of Bithynia. Aziraphale can hear doors slamming, people bustling through the streets, conversations being held in clipped, frantic tones. He stashes the finished paperwork in a drawer and makes his way to the door, stepping into a street that is far too brightly lit.

His heart jumps even before he raises his eyes to the sky. _The comet. That’s why Crowley was here in the first place, it must have been. The fool demon can never just_ ask _for help_.

Ever since being hit with the full force of seawater panic the first time he’d mentioned the comet, Aziraphale had been hyper-aware of Crowley’s distress surrounding the thing and how desperate he seems for company when it passes by Earth. He'd formed an educated guess about Crowley’s connection to the comet—he would have to be very oblivious indeed to be unaware of their connection—but he had never asked out right. The information had certainly never been offered, so that’s where the inquiry ended. Crowley has his secrets and Aziraphale has his walls, and both have always seemed important to any continued correspondence the two of them might have. _Rules_ have to be created when it comes to navigating something as uncharted as a working relationship between an angel and a demon.

The comet currently filling the sky however, seems to have such a blatant disregard for anything resembling rules that Aziraphale feels his own cold spike of anxiety like brine in his mouth. It lights up the sky like a beacon, its tail stretching halfway across the sky, larger, brighter, and more terrible than he’s ever seen it. A few people jostle past him, making their way to the church up the road where a larger crowd is starting to gather. Aziraphale is about to move towards the crowd and try to offer reassurances when he tastes the surge of brine again.

He freezes and concentrates on the sensation, craning his head up and down the street, looking for its source. The undercurrent of oysters is there, the salt, the hint of seaweed— all the notes and details he’s learned to associate with Crowley’s distress over the years, but Crowley himself is nowhere to be seen.

 _Aziraphale, you absolute oaf, you just had to go and pick a fight today of all days. You knew the comet was passing tonight, you_ knew _, and you still chased him away._

Forcing calm over his mind, he squeezes his eyes shut and focuses on the sea. An image of fierce waves crashing against a cliff face drifts to the front of his thoughts and he lets it fill him. There’s a familiar tug in his center, like a delicate gossamer thread tied to something deep and unreachable within him going suddenly taut, and he knows with unwavering certainty that he will find Crowley on the other end.

The thread. It’s troubling, and comes with all sorts of implications Aziraphale tries not to think too hard about, finding new ways to explain it away over the millennia. At first he’d told himself it was demonic wiles— Crowley trying to reel him into sin. Eventually, the story evolved into him simply having a _supernatural awareness_ and, demons being something of a dissonant chord, he would of course be just as attuned to any Hellish representative’s presence on Earth.

But something, at some point, had changed. Aziraphale has always been tempted to point at a companionable arm on a shoulder in Rome or the comforting support in Constantinople and tell himself, _this, this right here— a mouthful of grapes and the exact moment when the world turned upside-down_. But he knows it’s much more complicated than that. The mosaic is the only way he’s ever been able to make sense of it: hundreds of small, glittering moments—stunning snapshots of friendship, arguments, and favors set against thousands of years of humanity’s joys and tragedies—pieced together with painstaking care to form something larger. Something unique to him and Crowley, for better or worse.

Steeling himself and trusting that the crowd gathering down the street are merely frightened people who are ultimately not a danger to themselves, he turns to follow the pull of the invisible thread.

* * *

Aziraphale finds him sitting by the river that separates the two districts of the city, his knees pulled up in front of him and his arms draped over them loosely. He stares down at the ground between his hands, the sea seeming to crash around him as though he were the center of a maelstrom. Aziraphale swallows and closes the distance between them very slowly, eventually lowering himself to sit beside Crowley on the bank.

“Hello, Crowley,” he says softly, folding his hands in his lap.

Crowley sniffs. Clears his throat. Lifts his chin enough to stare out over the water, the comet’s light reflecting back at him in muted tones. “Hey, angel,” he says, voice all brass and rust and seawater.

“The paperwork’s all sorted. You would have been delighted by the loophole I found.”

A weak puff of disinterested laughter. “That’s great. I’m sure I can work the ‘agent on the inside’ angle with Hell. Beez’ll be pleased.”

“I suppose we both managed to dodge trouble with this one. Somehow.”

Crowley grunts.

“I do have to wonder if either of us got through to poor Peter. Both of us pulling the strings like that can’t have been… comfortable.”

“Yeah, well. You know perfectly well where I stand on the matter,” Crowley mutters.

Aziraphale stares out at the comet’s reflection on the water and sighs. “Crowley’s, it’s—” _It’s what? Complicated? Terrifying? Absurd? That you’re the only being on this earth or off it that I can talk to and we can’t even seem to manage that half the time. You must know I can’t just jump the line to side with you on this, you_ must _know that_. “It’s not that I _disagree_ with you, it’s simply that it’s an exceptionally complex situation.”

Crowley turns his head very slowly to stare at him, the comet glinting off his dark lenses. “Complex,” he says flatly.

“My dear fellow, we’re supposed to be hereditary enemies,” Aziraphale responds, chancing a small smile. “I daresay if Gabriel knew I was stargazing with a demon I’d be immediately and permanently recalled to head office.”

Crowley manages a slightly more heartfelt laugh at that. It’s short and quiet, but the quick flash of gold is unmistakable. “Stargazing,” he scoffs, shaking his head. He nods curtly up at the sky. “As if we could see a single bloody star tonight with this twat stealing the whole show.”

“Indeed. _Terribly_ bright this time around. It’s got the town in something of a panic.”

“Must be closer than usual,” Crowley says quietly, lifting his head to scowl up at the sky before dropping his eyes back to the river. He falls silent, the taste of oysters and brine lingering in Aziraphale’s mouth, loud and insistent as the silence stretches on.

“Icarus,” Crowley eventually says with a tired sigh.

“I beg your pardon?”

“‘S’what I’ve been calling it. You know. In my head.”

Aziraphale turns to stare at him. “Icarus?”

“Yeah, you know. The great prat who flew into the sun,” Crowley says, keeping his gaze stubbornly fixed on the water.

“Yes, I know the story,” Aziraphale prods gently. He can’t recall a time when Crowley had ever willingly offered information about the comet and is careful to not slam that conversational door shut before they can step through it. “I simply wasn’t aware you… had a name for it.”

Crowley shrugs. “That’s why it glows like it does, isn’t it? Flies so close to the sun that it literally starts to burn up. Spends a human lifetime trying to cool off, then just goes and—” he pauses and lifts one hand to make a circular gesture, “does it all again,” he finishes, dropping his hand listlessly back to his knee.

“Crowley, I— Wh—” Aziraphale stammers. “That’s— very poetic.”

“Oh, shut up, it’s not,” Crowley huffs, trying to sound more annoyed than the burnt orange of his voice will allow. “It’s just an idiot comet that seems to have a lot in common with an idiot character in a bedtime story. I connected some dots is all. Besides, calling it _The Comet_ makes the bastard rock seem way too important. Pedigreed.”

Aziraphale turns to face the water again, letting his eyes go slightly out of focus as he stares at Icarus’ reflection. A complicated tangle of emotion forms in him as Crowley places this piece of himself in Aziraphale’s care. It’s a strange sensation, managing to feel both comforting and completely backwards; a longing for a past that never happened, or nostalgia for an unwritten future.

“All the same,” Aziraphale says softly. “Icarus. It fits.”

Crowley grumbles something unintelligible before falling silent again.

The stillness that follows is a comfortable one, a fact that settles around Aziraphale like the warm daze that follows good food and better wine. There’s an easy lilt to the feeling, similar to opening a well-read book and flipping to a favorite passage. The sensation of being surrounded by Crowley’s sea remains, but instead of the center of a whirlpool, Aziraphale likens it more to sitting on an island, the tide hissing gently at the shoreline. He takes a breath and sees, all in an instant, exactly what it is he’s been creating in the mosaic.

It's love, yes, he's known as much for quite some time. That quiet undercurrent of his angelic nature that always flows through him. Taking in the entirety of the mural however, shows him the new depths of it. Layers built up over time, as slow as strata in a cliffside.

It's desire. The larger shape of it is that he cares because he _chooses_ to. He's here, beside this muddy river, under an apocalyptic sky, because he _wants_ to be. Because Crowley is here, apparently desperately lost at sea, so where else would he choose to be?

The realization rises in him with a fluid swoop, breaking the surface and resting there like a cork on water. A curious and unassuming new feature to an old seascape.

“Right then,” Aziraphale says, standing and smoothing the front of his tunic. “I’ve a bottle of wine back at the house positively begging us to toast Peter's found soul.” He looks down at Crowley, two yellow crescent moons just visible over the tops of his lenses and, with a deliberate movement, extends a hand to him.

Crowley's eyes flicker down to the offered hand. He stares. Blinks with the slow consideration of a cat. Swallows. Then flicks his eyes back up to Aziraphale, one eyebrow arched questioningly.

Aziraphale holds his ground. With a small smile, he adds, “Unless you’d prefer Icarus’ company.”

He feels the waves recede just before Crowley accepts the hand. The tide goes out around their island, the oysters in Aziraphale’s mouth fading with it. With glacial speed, Crowley reaches up and takes Aziraphale’s hand.

 _Will I ever get used to this?_ The thought flashes through his head as grapes burst in his mouth, followed immediately by the more startling realization: _Heaven help me, I’ve missed this._

Distantly, he feels his mind pulling an old story down from the shelf, slipping into the tale of his idealized vineyard as both storyteller and listener. It's a place he has avoided thinking about over the centuries, this wild garden, but a place he remembers with perfect clarity nonetheless. Clarity enough to recognize that it has changed, either by some subconscious tic of his own or by the natural evolution of his view of Crowley. The grapevines are still there, growing wild and untrellised, but it’s autumn now. Where sunbeams had once landed in bright splashes of wildflowers, there are now trees painted in sunset hues and a crisp breeze twisting through the branches. Overripe fruit and decaying leaves give an impression of mulch; decomposition and disrepair at first blush, but cultivated nourishment at closer inspection.

Thoughts of this place, once a sparkling oasis of temptation, have become synonymous with home. With comfort.

He pulls Crowley to his feet, catching him by the shoulder with his free hand. They stand like that for a few beats, their bodies linked in two spots, Crowley staring owlishly over the tops of his glasses and breathing heavily through his nose.

“Alright, then?” Aziraphale asks, pitching his voice low and soothing.

Crowley nods and pulls his hand back, drawing the grapes and the garden back into himself as he does.

“To Peter?”

“To Peter,” Crowley agrees.

“Splendid. Perhaps we can come to some sort of compromise that will steer us around messes like this in the future.”

Crowley stifles a snort. “The wine first, for Earth’s sake,” he says in his steady, dark orange corona. “Show me this loophole you found. _Then_ let’s talk shop.”

Icarus shines down on them as they wind their way back to Aziraphale’s rooms, a spectral glow that they don’t lift their eyes to again. There’s no hint of the sea or press of waves, no gossamer threads tying them together, no stories about wild vineyards running through Aziraphale’s head. Simply two friends, content in each other’s presence.

It’s in this muted calm that the taste of marigolds creeps into Aziraphale’s mouth. Without turning to look at Crowley, he smiles in return.


	10. I am easy to find

**Tritone,** _noun._  
( _diabolus in musica_ , “devil in music”)

A musical interval composed of three adjacent whole tones; an augmented fourth or a diminished fifth.

The tritone’s dissonance is utilized to avoid traditional tonality, highlight ambiguity, or generate unrest. It is unsettling due to how it is left unresolved.

* * *

** Brittany, France - 1020 AD **

“You’re _sure_?” Crowley asks.

Aziraphale clicks his tongue in annoyance. “ _Yes_ , Crowley. Although if you ask me one more time, I’m going to start reconsidering.”

“Well, can you blame me?” Crowley huffs, a hint of rust creeping into the otherwise familiar orange of his voice. “It’s been centuries of dancing around it. I was starting to assume the idea would die on the vine.”

“Yes, because if we’re _actually_ pursuing this, it has to be airtight. Honestly, I’m surprised you can be so nonchalant about the whole… _affair_ ,” Aziraphale says.

“ _The Affair_?” Crowley snorts into his tankard, a flash of gold and a floral spice rushing through Aziraphale as he does. “Absolutely not, we need something else to call it.”

His mood has been impossible to pin down today— brassy concern giving way to saffron amusement without warning, rust and gold in the same breath, marigolds dashing across Aziraphale’s tongue in tandem with oysters. He supposes it’s simple skittishness. It’s understandable, given the circumstances, but it’s not doing his own nervousness any favors.

The uncomfortable situation with Peter of Atroa a few centuries back had succeeded in closing the infuriating feedback loop of Crowley pestering him about working together, the two of them inadvertently stepping on each other’s toes, and Aziraphale wringing his hands until he could find a loophole to get them out of hot water. In doing so, however, an entirely new sort of dilemma had been thrown at their feet.

The dilemma of: _now what?_

As it turns out, a compromise to a centuries-old dispute is not forged overnight, and going from seeing each other a handful of times in an era to regularly comparing assignments had been a shock on several levels. The glimpse at Hell’s haphazard administrative system of _‘memos whenever possible, filing preferably never’_ had been the first.

Catching himself making excuses to see Crowley as much as possible, realizing that going an entire _year_ had the tendency to leave him with a dull ache of _missing_ , wondering if maybe he could ask head office for extra assignments in order to force their paths to cross— That had been a far greater shock to the senses.

“I suppose we can cross that bridge when we come to it,” Aziraphale says nervously into his cup. “If this will even… work.”

“You still think you’ll be smitten on the spot?” Crowley says, arching an eyebrow and somehow managing rust, brass, and saffron all at the same time.

“Smote,” Aziraphale corrects, distracted enough by the new color combination to ignore the annoyed _‘pfff’_ from across the table. “And it’s a legitimate concern. This goes against my entire angelic nature.”

“Aziraphale. You’ll be fine. If you didn’t get _smote_ for giving away your flaming sword, you’re not about to get your wings clipped for a minor temptation.” The sound of his voice is even and cool, but the color of it shifts wildly as he speaks, swinging between its comforting saffron and confusing red like a pendulum. “ _Besides_ ,” he continues, when Aziraphale frowns in distress, “I’ve seen you think your way out of far stickier situations. There’s always a loophole.”

Aziraphale sighs and stares down at the tabletop. “Did you ever hear from downstairs? After your, erm… trial run.”

“Nope. The blessing went off without a hitch and now the Jourdain orchard is about to have their best harvest in decades.”

“I still can’t believe you went with apples,” Aziraphale says, rolling his eyes and laughing weakly. “It’s _terribly_ on-the-nose.”

For all his teasing regarding the Jourdain matter, Aziraphale is grateful that Crowley had used actual miracles for his first blessing, rather than opting for a silver tongue. He had insisted on going first, saying that he had far less to lose if everything went pear-shaped, and tested the waters for both of them with a rather _extravagant_ bit of magic. One neither of them had been sure would even land. The past few years had involved quite a lot of experimenting with leaning into the _luck_ and _confidence_ aspects of his demonic magic instead of the _grace_ and _faith_ side of things, finding ways to twist a wile into a blessing.

Truth be told, this business with the orchard felt an awful lot like throwing a dart while drunk and blindfolded, and landing an accidental bullseye.

“I know where my strengths lie,” Crowley says haughtily. “What did you decide on, by the way? Greed?”

“Envy.”

“You know, I never quite got the distinction between those two,” he says wistfully, his attention wandering to the rafters. “The difference seems so…” he starts to make an absent-minded circular motion with his hand as he searches for the right word. “Nit-picky? Liminal?”

“ _Envy_ is coveting what someone else has,” Aziraphale says, dropping the role of principality for a moment, trading it in for the more comfortable shoes of the chronicler, before he realizes what he’s saying. “ _Greed_ is a burning desire for _more_. Very, um… very different sins,” he finishes, feeling warmth bloom across his cheeks.

Crowley’s hand drops to the table and he stares at Aziraphale. “Right,” he croaks, his voice mottled with too many colors and a flush of his own creeping up his neck. “Silly of me. _Obviously_ different sins.” Almost as an afterthought, he flashes marigolds and oysters across the table.

Aziraphale distracts himself from the extremely _loud_ beam of sensory information being shone at him by draining his cup and setting it down with a dull clunk. “Well. No point dallying,” he says, pushing his chair back. “This clergyman isn’t going to tempt himself.”

Crowley leans back in his chair and crosses his arms. “Just remember. It’s not about magic,” he says as Aziraphale prepares to leave. “All you’ve got to do is show him the path. The _choice_ is the important part. It doesn’t count for anything if he doesn’t _want_ to do it.”

Aziraphale swallows around a lump in his throat and nods.

“And, angel? I’ll be right outside.”

* * *

The church Aziraphale had chosen is a modest building. A squat, functional mass of stone and timber set on the outskirts of the village, the lush green fields and sparkling sea in the distance almost garish by comparison. A steadily growing village pushing to keep up with the surge of communes around it, a humble building, and its new priest, eager to prove himself. Aziraphale’s rationale had been that if he couldn’t manage a job this easy, then this whole angel-demon liaison truly was a lost cause.

Having scouted out the job ahead of time, Aziraphale stands in the segmented sunbeam in front of the tall church windows, hands clasped behind his back and waiting.

It isn’t long before he hears footsteps echoing through the otherwise silent room. They slow, then approach Aziraphale from behind.

“Er, hello. Welcome,” comes the young man’s voice, kind and soothing, but with an unmistakable undercurrent of nervousness.

Aziraphale turns to look over his shoulder at the man, fixing him in the full glow of his smile. “Ah! You must be the clergyman. A _pleasure_ , my dear fellow. A positively _lovely_ church that you’ve been graced with.”

It isn’t a lie. The church may be quite simple, but Aziraphale can tell that it’s loved. Generations of care and devotion shine through its walls and into him like sunlight. It’s a place of worship, but also a place of family. A place of community and healing. With a rustle of surprise, he realizes he’s actually _excited_ for this particular temptation.

The tension in the priest’s shoulders immediately starts to dissipate under the lightness of Aziraphale’s voice. “Father Laurent,” he says with a smile and a nod. “The pleasure’s all mine, mister…”

Aziraphale blinks. He hadn’t thought this far ahead. The notion of giving his name—his _angelic_ name—in this context feels like a line he somehow shouldn’t cross. “Fell,” he replies, following his instinct. “Azra Fell.”

“What brings you to our parish, Mr. Fell?”

“Would it be terribly off-color of me to say I’m simply admiring?”

A small frown passes over Laurent’s face. “Not… ‘off-color,’ sir, but certainly a bit unusual. Visitors to our congregation are rather uncommon,” he says, then seems to remember himself and adds, “though not unwelcome.”

“Ah, well there is a bit more to it than that I suppose. I’m looking for a place to settle. A new home, if you will.” Aziraphale turns his serene smile back to the window as he speaks, focusing on a distant point on the horizon where a thin stripe of the sea can be seen sparkling between the verdant countryside and the sky. “But it’s been such a struggle finding the right spot. I’ve been searching for years, as work allows.” “If I may be so bold, what is it you’re seeking? Years spent searching for a home seems like a weary task.”

Aziraphale chuckles at the enormity of the question. At what a _human_ question it is. _What am I seeking?_ _If I were Azra Fell the mortal, what would I want from this life?_

“It hasn’t been an _easy_ task, I’ll grant you that, but I like to think it’s worthwhile. I suppose I’m looking for someplace quiet and green, but also welcoming. Someplace where I can keep _learning_ ,” he says, almost dreamily. “I’m afraid my heart has always belonged to the sea as well, so I can’t see myself straying far from the coast.”

“And the church is important to you?” Laurent asks, moving to stand beside Aziraphale and follow his gaze out the window.

“Oh yes, very. Vital, in fact.”

He hears a hum of understanding from beside him as, out of the corner of his eye, Aziraphale sees the priest turn to look at him. “And what do you think of Plouider?” Laurent asks. “Perhaps it’s just my own love of this commune, but it sounds like everything you’re looking for.”

“Ah. Not… Not quite,” Aziraphale says, pulling on an embarrassed expression and slipping into a bit of a bumble. “There’s very little of the _arts_ here, and, well— I know myself well enough to know that I will grow… bored.”

“Bored?” It’s only one word, but it’s wrapped in a complicated veil of emotions.

_I suppose that’s the cue to spring the trap? Crowley did say to lead people by the heart…_

Aziraphale heaves a sigh. “Please don’t misunderstand me, this is a wonderful village and a truly exceptional landscape, but it lacks a certain… _created_ beauty to go with the natural grace. Oh dear, I don’t think I’m explaining it well.” Aziraphale takes a deep breath and starts over. “I wanted to see the church before ruling Plouider out. I’ve just come from Saint-Pol-de-Léon, you see, and the stained glass windows that have been installed since Father Dumond took up the position there are _breathtaking_.”

Finding the idea of improvisation somewhat horrifying, Aziraphale had taken the time to research the man’s background before attempting to prod him toward envy. Laurent, as it turns out, had been passed over for the position as priest at Saint-Pol-de-Léon in favor of Dumond five years ago. If the local gossip was to be believed, he had taken it quite poorly at first, and spent the better part of a year at the bottom of a bottle.

Aziraphale had been uneasy about using this information against the man, but after seeing the genuine love he had developed for this place and these people, he’s confident he can spin the situation to his advantage.

As expected, Laurent bristles noticeably at the name. Guilt and relief mingle in Aziraphale’s chest at Laurent’s obvious discomfort, creating a dissonant chord at his center. What surprises him, however, is that it merely feels like a key change instead of an instrument breaking under his fingers. No bolt of lightning strikes him down, the ground does not swallow him up, and the man whose weakness he’s exploiting does not demand reparation. Instead, the earth keeps turning and Aziraphale’s new chord seems to fit just as well as the old one.

“And not just the scenes they depict,” Aziraphale presses on, keeping his eyes fixed on the point on the horizon. “It’s the way the sunlight catches the colors and brings them to life. The way _color_ is picked up and carried across the worshippers like a second baptism. Oranges and blues and greens scattered across the pews like a drift of stars. A way to bring the heavens to Earth, if only for a moment. Some may say art is vanity, but I have never felt more in tune with my faith than in that moment.”

The intention had simply been to woo Father Laurent’s imagination, but he finds himself being swept away in the process. Aziraphale shakes himself out of his trance. “Oh. Bother,” he mumbles, smiling weakly and turning to face Laurent. “Letting my whimsy guide my words again.”

Laurent, his face still an unsettled mask of emotion, shakes his head. “Quite alright, Mr. Fell,” he says quietly. “Everyone finds their faith in their own way. Your connection to art sounds extraordinary.”

“If only the peace and charm of Plouider were as easy to find,” Aziraphale sighs. “ _Art_ can simply be bought. Love is much harder to find. A real shame— if it _could_ be bought, then Saint-Pol-de-Léon would have been perfect.”

He searches the man’s face, looking for an indication that he the temptation is taking root in him, but finding his emotional state impossible to read. _This would be so much easier if I could feel sin like I do love. Perhaps this one is best left to faith…_

“Well Father Laurent, I won’t keep you,” Aziraphale says, smiling warmly at him. “This is truly a wonderful village. Absolutely charming. Thank you for speaking with me.”

“O— Of course. Good luck in your search, Mr. Fell.”

Father Laurent remains standing at the window, staring at the distant sea with hands clasped behind his back, as Aziraphale’s footsteps resonate through the church and disappear.

* * *

The taste of oysters and brine hits him immediately upon stepping out of the church, powerful enough to stop him in his tracks. His stomach gives an involuntary jump at the sensation of waves crashing around him, even though logically he knows Crowley isn’t in any danger. _He’s worried then? Is that what the madness with his colors has been? Not skittishness, but actual distress? He’s_ this _worried about the whole thing?_ The splash of anxiety calms to a faint wave of affection as he follows Crowley’s ebb and flow.

He finds him in the small churchyard behind the building, leaning against a large oak tree and toeing distractedly at the ground. He is a startling streak of black and red against the otherwise idyllic greens and whites of the quiet countryside. An element that should be jarring, but somehow feels entirely natural. An artist’s signature at the bottom of a portrait. _He really should look more out of place, a demon in a churchyard and all. How does he always manage to slot into the world like he was made for it?_

Aziraphale lets a smile briefly break the surface before forging a path between the headstones. Crowley’s head jerks up and he falls still, watching his approach.

“Well?” Crowley asks as Aziraphale sinks onto the stone bench beside the tree. “How did it go?”

“All the pieces are set up,” Aziraphale says with a nervous frown, “but you certainly make it seem much easier than it actually is. So much is left to random chance. It doesn’t _bother_ you?”

There’s an almost imperceptible sigh of relief from Crowley, made noticeable by the receding brine. Then he smirks, pushes off the tree, and settles on the bench next to Aziraphale. “What’s the matter, angel? Trickery too _ineffable_ for you?”

Aziraphale scoffs around the marigolds in his mouth and shoots him a withering glare. “This is completely different and you know it.”

“If you say so,” Crowley shrugs. “You never did tell me how you were working the envy angle, by the way.” The wildly shifting colors in his voice from earlier have begun to calm, settling into his familiar orange.

“I needed to figure it out on my own,” Aziraphale says primly. “If I couldn’t solve a puzzle this easy, then I had no business entering into this collaboration.”

“A _puzzle_?” Crowley snorts. “One way to look at it, I guess. Are you going to make me guess your _solution_?”

Aziraphale folds his hands in his lap and lets his eyes wander to the tree where Crowley had been leaning. There is a tangle of shrubbery and vines creeping their way up and around the trunk; a fragrant and chaotic web of green and white as honeysuckle and morning glory twist themselves into knots. The sight and smell is somehow familiar— a hypnotic pull at his attention, a dissonant chord waiting for resolution, a nagging whisper at the back of his mind that, for all its insistence, he can’t quite parse.

“I simply prodded at the jealousy already present. A rivalry with a neighboring priest whose church is, erm…” _Full of color and dancing lights and stars. A feast for the senses, a new way to see the world, a fan for the flames of love and faith and awe._ He coughs and lets his eyes dart furtively up to Crowley. “Prettier,” he finishes.

Crowley stares for a moment, then throws his head back and laughs. “You set up a priest pissing contest!” he cries, his golden delight sliding easily through the pathways of Aziraphale’s mind like a snake through the grass. “Oh, that’s _good_. On your first time too.”

Aziraphale smiles in spite of himself. “I expect that, very soon, Father Laurent will be skimming considerable amounts off the top of the church coffers to make some aesthetic improvements of his own.” _Thus creating jobs in the community, drawing worshippers to the church, making it stronger in the long run— I can and_ will _find ways to do good with this partnership._

“And see? All without traceable miracles. Fruitful harvests and bickering priests, and no one was smote in the process. I’d say this little arrangement is off to a good start, wouldn’t you?”

For a brief moment, Aziraphale wonders how they got here. He marvels at five thousand years worth of twists and turns and forks in the path that have brought them to this moment. The infinite number of ways it could have gone differently. If they would still be here in this churchyard, laughing about an angel learning trickery if Crowley hadn’t taken the paintbrush in Athens. If Aziraphale hadn’t followed his impulse to the popina in Rome. If both of them had just left poor Peter of Atroa alone.

“Yes, I suppose it is,” Aziraphale says.

_If it hadn’t rained in Eden that day. If the serpent had never extended his hand on the garden wall. If we’d never found this path._

He turns to Crowley and extends his hand. “To this arrangement, then? Wherever it might lead?”

The golden delight and heady rush of marigolds fades to a gentle floral backdrop as Crowley tilts his head at him. “To the Arrangement,” he nods.

With a crooked grin, he takes Aziraphale’s hand, and, for the fifth time in the planet’s memory, they drift into the vineyard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [I'm still standing in the same place where you left me standing](https://vimeo.com/336630076)


	11. Interlude I - We ignored the pleas of the forest and the seas

_"We had the experience but missed the meaning,_  
_And approach to the meaning restores the experience_  
_In a different form, beyond any meaning_  
_We can assign to happiness."_

-T.S. Eliot, “The Dry Salvages”

When does a story truly begin? If your lens for a story is two immortal souls—two beings who will not end—then is the beginning important? Is it even definable? (It is always important. It is always worthwhile to look closer, to ask questions).

Consider, if you would, the sea.

An enormous request, I know, but it is important. It is worthwhile. Consider the sea—the dominant force on the planet—and the relentless, enduring way it interacts with the earth. It would be tempting to look at a stretch of cliffed coast and marvel at its strength and permanence. To look at this severe juncture of land and sea and simply behold _the way of things_. A timeless fixture of rock, the unyielding spine of the earth, this powerful structure able to stand proud against millennia of battery by the sea.

But surely all things begin somewhere. The shape of the cliff face now is not what it was a thousand years ago, before the ocean carved it patiently, tirelessly, mercilessly, into this silhouette, changing its contour one molecule at a time. A centuries-long crescendo of erosion climaxing with a single wave— a wave like every wave before it, only different in that it finally releases the pressure, sending lifetimes of weakened strata cascading into the sea.

Surely, then, this cliff’s beginning is somewhere in its smooth-faced past. Surely.

But what of earthquakes?

What of tectonic drift?

And what of beginnings that contain their own ending?

* * *

**The Earth Project: iteration 21**

Joriel had been itching for an opportunity to get away from his fellow starmakers. When the Almighty had floated the open invitation for any angel to explore Her new passion project, he’d jumped at the idea. It wasn’t that he wanted to get away from the _stars_ —if there was one thing in the cosmos that he felt he understood, it was celestial bodies—but the strange unease that had been bubbling, quietly but steadily, among his peers was unsettling. Doubts wrapped up inside questions had been passing between the starmakers. Questions about the nature of art. Individuality. Free will. And most unnerving of all was how much _sense_ these new ideas seemed to make.

What was the point of life if you could never change or improve? Was their art in the stars truly _theirs_ if they had no free will? Could art even _exist_ without love or passion or individuality? And if not, then what was the point of their work?

Joriel sighed and firmly shook his head, as though the physical act could push the questions aside. Getting some distance from the persistent noise had been the point of coming down here, after all. He brought his eyes into focus on the globe in front of him.

_I know absolutely nothing about this bloody planet. How does She expect anyone to pick a location?_

He started to circle the globe, pausing every now and then to peer at what seemed like potentially interesting landmarks. It was when he stopped to examine a particularly large swatch of blue that he caught a whiff of something sweet and distinctly floral. An aroma that was somehow familiar, though he had no idea how, flowers not being something he spent any time around.

 _Alright then. Letting the planet choose for me seems as good a method as any_. He quickly raised a hand and touched the shoreline, not giving himself time to consider it too deeply or change his mind. A soft rustle of wind and a burst of light later, he found himself materialized on Earth’s surface.

The planet was colder than he would have thought. Colder, wetter, and louder, though not unpleasantly so. He stood on a grey and rocky cliff overlooking a vast ocean, the dark stone jutting up and slicing into the space between sea and sky as turbulent waves crashed against the rock wall far beneath his feet. Salt spray hissed into the air with each wave’s collision, creating a chill mist that hung heavily around him. A grey and overcast sky stretched down to meet steely water on the distant horizon.

It was not at all what he had expected, for all he had expected anything, but he found it instantly soothing; a cold, stern sort of beauty that spoke of strength instead of subtlety. Intimidating, yet awe-inspiring.

The floral smell was stronger down here, a strange perfume that mingled with the salt edge to the air. Joriel took a moment to gather his bearings by turning slowly in place, searching for the source of the smell. As far as he could tell, the cliffs were barren rock, edging away from the sea and giving way to scrub brush and a few windblown trees. Certainly nothing as lush and flowering as the aroma might suggest.

He shrugged it off, chalking it up to some strange facet the Almighty was instilling into Her pet project. He was about to pick a random direction and start walking when he spotted the other angel, a pale smudge against the grey backdrop, picking his way out from behind the trees. He halted, seeming to notice Joriel at the same time. Confused and entirely unsure of what else to do, Joriel raised a hand and gave a tentative wave. The pale angel mirrored the awkward gesture and began forging a careful path toward him.

“Didn’t expect to meet anyone else down here,” Joriel called when they were in range. “Especially not, um, well _here_ ,” he added, gesturing to the lifeless stretch of rock.

The other angel froze when he spoke, staring at him with wide blue eyes.

“You alright?” Joriel asked. “If I’m intruding, I can, um. Go?”

“Oh! No, it’s fine. Please stay. You just… caught me off guard.” The voice that bloomed around Joriel glowed a bright sky blue, a shocking contrast to the steely grey surrounding them. For a few moments, he couldn’t manage anything but a confused stare.

A wave crashing into the cliffs below eventually startled him out of his daze. “Bit of a dreary location,” He managed. “Why’d you choose it?” _Why’d I choose it, for that matter?_

“Coastal plant life,” the other angel said matter-of-factly, his voice still an unnerving blue. His face fell a bit and he looked around the cliffs before continuing. “Although, I seem to have misjudged my point of entry. There isn’t much here except scrub brush and a few hawthorns.”

Joriel thought of the immeasurable ocean at his back, slamming tirelessly into the cliffs at one end and reaching endlessly to the horizon at the other. He had seen how massive the surface of it was by looking at the globe, but being this close to it, he suddenly wondered what the bottom of it was like. If it had a bottom that could even be reached. For all its size and depth and severity, it reminded him of the cosmos, but it held mysteries for him that the stars did not. It set far more questions alight in his mind than it held answers in return. It was enthralling. Fascinating. Mesmeric and terrifying.

He felt he could not have come up with a more ridiculous phrase than _there isn’t much here_ if he had an eternity to mull it over.

“Anyway,” the stranger continued when Joriel didn’t respond. “I was going to walk up the coastline a bit and see what else this place has to offer. You’re, er— welcome to join me?”

“Oh, uh. Yeah. Sure.”

Joriel let him lead the way along the cliffs, his attention wandering out to sea as they walked in an awkward, but blessedly colorless, silence.

“Aziraphale,” the stranger eventually said, pulling a glimmer of blue back into Joriel’s mind.

“Az— sorry, what?”

“My name. Aziraphale,” he repeated, with a small chuckle this time. The floral aroma found its way back to Joriel, a sensation he hadn’t noticed had disappeared.

“Joriel.”

Aziraphale seemed to release the smallest hint of tension from his posture with introductions out of the way. A slight smile lingered on his face and the suggestion of flowers hung in the air between them. “I feel like I’ve seen the name. Starmaker, right?”

Joriel raised an eyebrow and glanced at Aziraphale. “You’ve seen my name?”

Azirahale shrugged. “I’m a chronicler. I see everyone’s name.”

“Including the plants’ I guess.”

“They’re in the records, so yes,” Aziraphale said primly, not catching the snark in Joriel’s voice. “They’re about the only thing in the records about Earth, in fact. Other than some scarce facts about the flora and fauna, this whole place is something of a mystery.”

“I’m surprised She’s letting angels explore it at all,” Joriel laughed humorlessly. “ _Solving mysteries_ doesn’t seem to be an activity She enjoys sharing with anyone.”

“Er— right,” Aziraphale said. The smell of brine edged the flowers off of the breeze once again. He frowned and continued slowly, seeming to choose his words carefully. “You spend your time bringing stars into being and then stitching them together into constellations. That doesn’t seem like solving some great puzzle to you?”

“A _puzzle_? No, chronicler, it’s not a puzzle. It’s…” _Art? Passion? …Vanity?_ He sighed. “Hard to explain.”

“Ah. Would you like to try? I’d love to know more,” Aziraphale prodded. Joriel had no idea why this strange chronicler was so eager to keep talking and he wasn’t sure he was entirely comfortable with it. “I’ve never had a chance to talk to a starmaker about their work before.”

 _Fine._ “A nebula,” he offered. “I’m working on a nebula right now.”

“Oh, _wonderful_ ,” Aziraphale breathed. “Is it a diffuse nebula or a planetary nebula? I've always thought the ionized gases looked so lovely against the stars.”

“Erm, I don't know about the _type_ of nebula it is. It's just…” His mind faltered, trying to find a way to talk about artistry to someone who only seemed keen on the facts. The Eagle Nebula sat half-finished in the heavens, but ideas of _ionized gas_ and _diffusion_ were completely incompatible with his understanding of the project.

He tried to grasp how he could possibly explain to a _chronicler_ that some things couldn't be known, they had to be felt. He thought of humming and sighing colors into being, of reaching in and twisting his fingers around the swirling gases. The subtle moment he had learned to feel out, a shift that felt like water turning to powdery ice crystals under his hands. With this cosmic change of seasons, he knew to drag his fingers up and out of the chromatic cloud— slowly, fluidly, trailing colors and stardust from his fingertips like a painter with his brushes.

“It's just a nebula,” he mumbled. “Ionized gas and colors and all that.”

Far below, a fresh wave crashed against the cliff’s base, sending salt spray hissing into the air around them. Aziraphale raised his face to the mist and the grey sky. He pressed on, apparently determined to keep the conversation alive. “I honestly expected _Earth_ to be more colorful than this. It’s so bright from Heaven.”

Joriel thought of how _blue_ it suddenly sounded down here, a turn of phrase that refused to slot into any corner of his mind properly, and forced himself to shrug. “It’s a big planet. Not all of it can be soaked in color.”

“No, I - I suppose that’s sensible.”

“It’s not _sense_ , it’s just how planets work,” Joriel said, his voice bristling unintentionally. _What is it about you? Why do you unsettle me? Why is your voice a color and your smile a flower?_

Aziraphale fell back into silence, his breath catching almost imperceptibly every time a wave collided with the cliff below their feet. Joriel was unsure if it was awe, surprise, or some mixture of the two.

“Look,” he eventually sighed, when it became clear Aziraphale was not going to be the one to break the silence. “Let’s try again. I’m Joriel. A starmaker. Nice to meet you.”

“That would explain why you know _how planets work_ ,” Aziraphale responded curtly, the color fading from his voice.

 _I don’t need this right now. I’m down here to get away from all the noise and instead I’m bickering with a librarian._ “Right.”

“Jupiter’s moons, correct?” Aziraphale asked, his voice still clipped and colorless. “And Pisces and Serpens?”

“Uh, yeah. How-”

“Chronicler, remember? I put their details in the records as you made them, along with your name and position.”

“Didn’t realize your lot was so organized.”

Aziraphale stopped walking. When Joriel turned to look at him, his face was a knot of confusion and vexation. “My _lot?_ ” he echoed. Somehow the lack of color made him easier to comprehend. Safer to look at. It was an unexpected relief. Joriel felt on even footing with this chronicler for the first time since landing on Earth.

“Yes? You know, the chroniclers,” Joriel bit back, his annoyance growing. “Pretty different end of the spectrum from the starmakers, it would seem.” _Stars help me, this is the exact opposite of why I came down here._

“We’re exactly the same!”

“How do you figure?” Joriel scoffed. He could feel himself glaring, getting ready to trade verbal blows. An unknown shadow twisted within him, ready to strike on his behalf.

“How— What— Joriel. We are _angels_. Our assignments have nothing to do with what we _are._ ”

“Our assignments have _everything_ to do with it! You rattled off a bunch of _facts_ and _statistics_ about my work—my _art_ —and somehow missed the entire point of it.” He was aware of how he sounded. He heard his pointed use of the word ‘ _my_ ’ and somehow, in that moment, he absolutely didn’t care.

Without waiting for Aziraphale’s reply, he turned and began to stalk away. He made it a few steps before the clear voice behind him rang out, frustrated and angry and hurt.

“The point!”

Joriel stopped and squeezed his eyes shut against the ashen landscape, keeping his back to Aziraphale. _What. What do you want from me? Why are you pushing this? Why can’t I just walk away? I don’t know you. I don’t owe you anything._

For a few moments, the only sound was the steady static of the waves. When Aziraphale spoke again, he seemed to have regained his calm, his voice a rich blue once more. “The _point_ , my friend, is not for us to understand. The Almighty works in ineffable ways and it is not our place to question Her.”

Joriel felt something dislodge deep within him when the color bled back into the world. It flooded him like light. Like pain. His pride gave way to guilt, his anger to regret. He opened his eyes and turned around, but heard the snap of Aziraphale’s expanding wings as he did so. When he turned and faced the spot where Aziraphale had stood, the chronicler was gone.

Joriel stood alone in the salt spray, a stubborn spot of color against the vast, damp grey.

* * *

_**It does go both ways, then.** _

Perhaps more than anything else, God was interested in the fact that it had been Joriel who found Aziraphale on Earth this time. The two of them had no apparent memory of each other, but the _familiarity_ remained. The recognition was there, and even though their interaction was fraught with tension, She recognized the same spark She had seen several times now.

The new depth in their relationship was unexpected and turbulent, but seemed to hold more potential for growth than any previous iteration. The opportunity was there for understanding and genuine compassion. For compromise.

It was an opportunity they never sought out. After their excursion to the salt-veiled cliffs, the two angels returned to their respective tasks in the heavens and did not speak again.

Aziraphale threw himself into his work in the archives with redoubled effort and did not resurface. The act of giving information tangible form seemed to be a sort of balm against the unsettling argument by the sea and he drew the chronicler around himself like armor. A barrier between himself and impossible questions. The starmaker had thoroughly unnerved him and he seemed determined to put on a stiff upper lip and return to how things were. If he had been closer than colleagues with any of the other chroniclers, someone might have noticed and offered comfort or a kind word, but no one came to him.

Joriel, for his part, returned to the same grey and damp perch beside the sea as often as his work allowed. He seemed to seek an entirely different sort of comfort, preferring to take on a physical form and surround himself with tactile sensations. He became a regular sight along the cliffs— a small, red stain against the cold, steely grey. Sometimes, he wandered. Other times, he sat and stared out across the water.

God wasn’t blind to the fractures forming among the starmakers, and watched with a detached sort of interest as the dissent affected some harder than others. Many coped in a way similar to Aziraphale— losing themselves in their work for extended periods of time, building walls around themselves and their ideals, locking themselves in with known quantities. Others seemed utterly unaffected, either through ignorance or righteousness. And still others seemed to actively push back against the limits of their angelic being, speaking in gradually louder whispers of beauty, creativity, and pride. Posing questions about life and chaos. Wondering on the nature of love. The _point_ of a hierarchical structure.

The purpose of ineffability.

She watched all of this unfold with Her usual scholarly eye, wondering how much of this had grown from a single seed planted by one rebellious mind, and how much of it was just the inevitable nature of what She had created. Some angels were, by her own design, more inherently curious and creative, but She hadn’t foreseen how far that would carry them. Or how much it would spread.

Impossible questions were at the forefront of Her mind when She decided to reset the balance again, starting a new version of Earth with another missing ingredient in hand.

She took in the state of Heaven and the cosmos while She worked, but Her mind dwelled most heavily on the lonely starmaker, grounded in a sort of self-imposed exile by the sea. It was Joriel, in all his red and gold stubbornness, that She was thinking of as She added ineffability directly into the mix. She further shaped and molded the seas, creating depths that could never be fully explored, inaccessible wonders and terrors, and unfathomable mysteries.

Her next iteration of Earth included places the light could never reach.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Some wonderful fanart for this chapter can be found over [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/620114585080446976/show-chapter-archive)!


	12. Let the only sound be the overflow

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Expanding on the tags with specific cws for this one. This chapter contains depictions of plague (less graphic than chapter 8), pandemic (more intense than chapter 8), off-camera/mentioned death, and grief. The characters come out the other side stronger for it, but the journey is hard.

** The Carpathian Basin, Hungary - July 1349 **

Jasmine shouldn’t be growing here. The climate is mild, temperate at best, and Crowley is certain it’s not a native plant. He imagines some gardener, at some point, acquiring a rare cutting and planting it on a whim, the vines finding unlikely purchase in the ground and spreading across the churchyard like a weed. An invasive species that no one would ever dream of cutting back.

If he closes his eyes, he can almost focus on the smell to the extent that everything else seems to fade away, willing Aziraphale's smile over his mind like an eclipse.

Almost.

Some things, as it turns out, are stronger than jasmine. Death, for one. The heavy smell of rot that permeates everything. Simply the way the world smells now. Occasionally people will try to mask it— the smell of roses or camphor or cinnamon lying on top of it like an oil slick on a pond, never quite sinking beneath surface level. Everyone seems to give up on the aromatics eventually though, succumbing to the plague or just giving in to good old-fashioned despair and letting the hellish stink back in. He thinks he’d smell death in his dreams at this point, if he were to sleep. Even here in this jasmine-soaked churchyard it seems to have followed him.

It’s been following him for over a year now. Another plague, this one nipping at his heels as he makes his way east. It's starting to feel like he's dragging the damned thing along behind him like an albatross.

Head office has been quiet since the pandemic hit. At least as far as Crowley is concerned. He knows it must be an absolute shit show downstairs, what with the souls pouring in by the millions, but he’s not about to check in unless he’s explicitly ordered to. If they’ve forgotten about him for now, well, that’s all the better. He’s waited out these apocalyptic spells before.

Although, in the past, he’s at least had the option to seek out company.

He squeezes his eyes shut tighter and rests his elbows on his knees, curling his body into a mockery of question mark. Aziraphale. Where was he likely to be now? Mexico? South America? The farthest possible point from _right here_ while still being on this planet? _If he’s even still on the bloody planet._

With a grimace, he concentrates on the smell of jasmine and tries to force up the feeling of the thread, but simply ends up replaying memories instead.

_Florence. A year ago. Or was it two? Anyone's guess. Time's a funny thing these days._

_You were frantic. Half the city was dead, the other half was dying. I hadn’t seen you in decades and you showed up at my door with a tsunami at your back. You stammered something about the roads being impassable but your eyes told a different story._

_“It’s Constantinople again,” they said._

_“It’s spread beyond the city,” your mouth said._

_“What do you need, angel?” I wanted to say. “I’ll give it to you, whatever it is.”_

_“Yeah. A real reckoning this time,” my fool mouth replied._

_I wanted to grab you, to pull you into the orchard, to hold onto you until we could both forget about the death and the suffering and the god damned mortality of it all._

_Would anything be different if I had?_

_“People are calling it the end times, “ I said instead._

_Who can blame them? Famine. War. Now Pestilence._

_You just stood there, tying your hands in knots, tripping over your words. The wave surged. You kept dancing around it, never quite looking me in the eye, never fully saying what you meant._

_“Heaven’s recalling me,” you eventually said with a flash of metal and a whirl of salt. “Apparently this is out of their hands and they want to… reassess.”_

_“Recalling.”_

_“Europe’s getting something of a clean slate, so they want to see if I’d be better suited elsewhere. The missive mentioned scouting the Americas. Possibly Mexico.”_

_“They’re just leaving the whole continent to this rot then?”_

_“Crowley— what would you have them_ do _?”_

_“Anything! Prevent it in the first place! Not… watch the world die.”_

_“It— They say—”_

_You looked so miserable. Why didn’t I reach for you?_

_“They say it will only be a third.”_

_Your sea was deafening and I sank in it like a stone._

_Only._

_“Of… all of them?”_

_Your words were white and frigid and chased by brine when you finally got them out._

_“Crowley, did— Did your lot have anything to do with this one?”_

_“My—”_

_Angel,_ you _are my lot. Just you._

 _“When is it ever_ my lot _doing the real atrocities?”_

_My damn fool mouth._

_You were stung—I could see it, smell it, hear it—but we just let it hang._

_I thought it was anger. I eventually figured out that it was fear. Sadness and fear._

_Hindsight’s a real bitch of a thing._

_You spoke about purpose, I think. Plans and meaning and ineffability, but it was so hard to hear. Your voice was too bright. Your waves too loud._

_Then you were gone._

Crowley heaves a sigh and opens his eyes, pulling himself out of the memory he's replayed a thousand times now. There had been nothing for it, of course. He knows this. Seeking out the orchard in Aziraphale wouldn’t have changed anything except to perhaps make being apart harder. Aziraphale had his orders and disobeying wasn’t an option. Crowley would have found a way to talk him out of it if he had tried.

Still, he can’t help running every _what if_ scenario through his head. He breathes in Aziraphale’s smile for the first time in decades, and lets himself sink back into a sea of questions.

He’s not sure how long he sits there, lost in jasmine and memory, but the sun has risen before movement in his vision returns him to himself. He brings his eyes slowly into focus.

A woman is forging a path through the headstones, her shoulders tense and hunched, apparently oblivious to his presence at the edge of the yard. She’s dressed in nondescript clothes that suggest function over fashion, a spill of bright black hair down her back the only thing about her that stands out. When it becomes apparent she intends to enter the church, Crowley intervenes.

“I wouldn't,” he calls to her. “There's no one alive in there.”

She freezes, her back to him and her hand drifting to a knife at her hip. Very slowly, she turns to face him.

He realizes how he looks. The only living body in the whole village and he's haunting the graveyard like a specter. But then… So is she.

“You've been inside?” she asks in a ragged voice.

 _Stars, she sounds more tired than I am._ “Took a peek, yeah. This is a ghost town. Most of the villagers seemed to have come here at the end.” _Piled into the church like it could save them. Laid out in the pews like hospital beds._

She rests her hand on the butt of the knife and takes a few cautious steps toward him.

“It was the plague,” he says, waving a disinterested hand in the direction of the church. “Pretty sure you’re not going to fight it off with a knife.”

She does her best to glare at him, but as she draws closer, Crowley can see just _how_ tired she is. She’s young—he places her somewhere in the indeterminate landscape of her twenties—but her face has the kind of gauntness to it that comes from losing too much weight too quickly. The hollows around her eyes are dark and sunken, and the hair which had been so striking from a distance hangs lank and tangled around her ashen face.

She looks like she's been dragged through Hell.

“So there's… no one?” she croaks.

Crowley shakes his head and resumes staring at the ground.

Any wind she might have had in her sails seems to die at this, and she crumples onto the other end of the bench, embodying both a sunken ship and the storm that doomed it. With a shuddering breath, she leans over her knees, buries her face in her hands, and falls still.

There is a reason Crowley opts for mischief and tempting people to pride instead of anything more malevolent. When this broken woman crashes to earth beside him, he’s reminded why. Mischief is annoying, even funny at times. Pride has a way of making most people light up with curiosity and joy, and while it’s not something he can _feel_ since his fall from grace, it’s still satisfying to _watch_. What he _can_ feel however, what demons who haven’t spent time on Earth don’t seem to understand, is despair.

Sorrow flows from the person next to him as though a dam has burst, and he feels it as deeply and painfully as if it were his own.

It’s not the first such catastrophe he’s been through, but they never seem to get easier. He thinks of floods. He thinks of Sodom and Babel and Egypt. Wars, empires, crusades. Constantinople. The world will recover eventually. It always does. Whether the shipwreck of a person sitting next to him will live long enough to see it, however, is less certain.

Unsure of what to say to someone experiencing the end of the world for the first time, he forgoes empty platitudes and opts for silence.

Eventually, the feeling of a burst dam fades to a trickle, something slightly different moving in to replace it. Something dark and eroded. She mutters something unintelligible as she pushes off the bench and starts to stumble away.

He doesn't stop to think. When he feels the absolute hopelessness precipitate out of her, he lifts a hand, snaps his fingers, and stops time.

There's something too familiar in the feeling. Something that immediately nags at the back of his mind, trying to pull up things long buried, kicking the sediment of a lakebed into murky clouds in search of trinkets lost in its depths. Crowley stands, removes his glasses and holds them in folded hands behind his back, then circles around to stand in front of her. With careful consideration, he taps into the depths of his demonic senses and leans in to study her face.

It's dizzying at first. The amount of despair pouring from this one person is almost blinding— a bit like stepping out of a dark cellar and staring directly into the afternoon sun. The anguish, the misery, the _sorrow_. The rage that had been fueling her has boiled off, leaving a scum of hopelessness in its place. Crowley feels the yellow of his eyes expand and darken, tarnishing into to a deep amber that seeps out to the edges as he peers into her, reading her as easily as a book. It’s a path to self-destruction that she's on and he can see every signpost. Defeat, wretched and all-consuming, is etched into every line of her. He looks at the knife on her belt and sighs, then replaces his glasses and returns to his spot on the bench.

He takes a breath of the heavy air, readies his silver tongue, and snaps his fingers again.

“Wait,” he says, as her body resumes its plummet through time. Into the word, he pours all of the serpent. The soft lilt of temptation, a gentle tug at her curiosity, a promise of respite. With one syllable, he offers to show her something _more_. Something better. It’s the voice that once suggested Eve try the apple. The voice that started it all.

But he adds something else to it. That extra ingredient, placed there by Aziraphale. The subtle spice that changes the whole shape of a dish. He focuses all of his will into the sound of his voice, infusing it with everything the past three hundred years have taught him about blessings and wiles, adding notes and overtones to create a new chord. Something suggestive and alluring, but also soothing. Beguiling, yet compassionate.

The sound that flows from him is human enough to break his own heart.

“Please. Wait?” He lifts the resonance at the end just enough to sound questioning, making sure she knows this is a request, not a demand.

Crowley throws her this rope, then waits to see if she will climb it or if she will hang herself.

She freezes with her back still to him, her body going tense as a bowstring. Her breath comes in quick, shallow bursts.

When she doesn’t turn, Crowley leans into the angel in his voice. “What’s your name?” he asks gently.

Later—centuries later—he will think back on this pivotal moment and wonder what compelled him to reach out to her with such tenderness. Sometimes, he will think it was the effect of the jasmine on his emotions. Other times, he will convince himself it was simple loneliness. Always, he avoids thinking about it any deeper than this.

“I’m—” he starts, but breaks off. The name _Crowley_ feels dissonant in this moment somehow. The improper person for this scenario. Acting on instinct and suddenly unsure of where he fits in a world where voices are colorless and jasmine is just a weed, he reaches for something else. Fumbles for _anything_ else. “I’m Anthony,” he says on a whim.

She turns slowly to face him, fixing him with an intense stare. Her dark eyes are curious and cautious, the smallest sparks of light shining out of her otherwise defeated expression. Without taking her eyes off him, she returns to the bench and slowly sinks to the opposite end.

“Adrielle,” she says, barely above a whisper.

“Why are you here, Adrielle?”

A breath of humorless laughter escapes her. “Hell if I know anymore. Why are _you_ here?”

Crowley turns to look at her. _Treading water_ , he wants to say. “I like jasmine,” he says instead.

She stares at him.

“Reminds me of… Nicer times,” he says. “But truly. Why are you here?”

“I thought—” Her voice breaks and she takes a breath to steady herself, raising her eyes briefly to the sky where she seems to find some spark of anger, then lowers her frown back to him. “I don’t know where else to go. I thought if I could just… find other people. Maybe I would know what to do next.”

“You don’t live here?”

Crowley watches a battle wage across her face— she knits her brows together, draws a huge breath, sets her jaw. Then she shakes her head. “Do you?”

“No.”

“Travelling?”

Crowley nods. “You could say that. You?”

“You could say that.”

He glances up at the afternoon sky. “Unless you intend to stay in this shell of a town tonight, you should probably move on soon. There won’t be much of a moon tonight.”

That same sorrow pulses out of her again like a grim beacon, and Crowley feels it pull him in. This time, when she rises to leave the churchyard, Crowley stands with her. “Shell of a town,” he says with a shrug when she lifts an eyebrow at him. “I’m not staying either.”

Her clever eyes take him in, and whether it’s numbness, curiosity, or some combination of them two, she allows him to follow her back to the road. A modest roofed wagon with two sturdy looking horses harnessed to it waits for her around the bend.

Seeing her to her wagon becomes seeing her to the edge of town. When she asks him which direction he’s heading, he shrugs and says, “North?”

With a grunt and a nod, she eases the horses onto the road leading north. Crowley takes a moment to wonder if it’s loneliness or a want for a sense of security that has pulled them into this unspoken orbit, and which of them is following the other. Then he shakes it off, putting the thought and the empty town behind him.

* * *

** August, 1349 **

“What’s north?” Adrielle asks, the day after they leave the valley. She doesn’t actually sound curious. She sounds like someone trying to fill empty space. Someone who can’t bear the quiet.

Crowley understands completely.

“Not sure. England eventually.”

He’s walking alongside the wagon, but can still hear the scoff from where she sits at the handler’s seat. _Enough spirit in her to be annoyed. Good._

“Unless you have a better idea, north seems as good a direction as any,” he adds. “East has been… bad luck.”

She seems to accept this as enough of an answer and turns her eyes back to the path ahead of them.

* * *

Adrielle refuses to sleep in the wagon, to Crowley’s great annoyance.

“It’s only going to get colder,” he scolds her as she unfurls a bedroll beside the fire. “We have mountains to pass through.”

“Then I’ll find more blankets.”

“And when it rains?”

“I’ll sleep under the wagon,” she huffs, pulling the blankets around her.

“Why are we even bothering with it? Why not leave it behind and just take the horses?”

She rolls onto her side, putting her back to him, but not before he catches a pulse of the sorrow he had felt in the churchyard.

Crowley sighs and puts another branch on the fire. “I’ll take first watch,” he says softly.

He sits watch until the sun rises.

* * *

“You _must_ be hungry,” she says, frowning at him and holding out a rabbit haunch.

Crowley shakes his head. “Already ate.”

Her frown deepens.

“You were off skinning your dinner and I found some berries. Really. I’m fine. Eat.”

She pulls the meat back to herself with a shrug. “Suit yourself.”

Later, after she’s picked the bones clean, she stares up at the sky as the twilight gives way to the first stars. That same heartache radiates from her again, a sorrow that Crowley knows has set down roots in her soul.

“What were you? I mean before,” she waves her hand vaguely, as though she could capture the suffering of a continent in a simple gesture, “all this.”

Adrielle doesn’t stand the silence long. It hadn’t taken him long to learn this about her. Silence seems to gnaw at her more than anything, and she’s quick to fill it.

“Hm. Sort of a jack of all trades, I suppose.” He rests his forearms on his knees and gazes out to the horizon. “Did some time as a soldier. Didn’t work out. Spent a bit as a gardener. Then a moneylender. Dabbled as an architect. Hell, I even apprenticed with a scribe for a while.”

He hears a scoff from beside him. That small huff that exists somewhere between a snort and a sigh. Almost a laugh, not quite a tut. A noise that somehow manages to sound irritated, sarcastic, and fond all at once. It’s an amazing feat of nuance, and a quirk he’s growing very accustomed to. He turns to see her arching an eyebrow skeptically.

“An _architect_?”

“Yep.”

She considers this for a few breaths before asking, “None of that made you happy?”

“Never said that. Just said they didn’t work out.” He stirs the coals in moody silence for a few moments. “But before all of it—” he says, mirroring her hand gesture, “I was an artist.”

She doesn’t scoff at this. She simply tilts her head to one side and watches him, a sadness settling behind her eyes that makes her look far older than she is. Then she sighs and looks back to the sky.

“I trained the horses,” she says in a far-off sort of way. “I worked as a tailor when we needed one. Or I would mend wagons. I was learning herbalism too. I was—” her voice betrays her, giving way to a slight crack. She clears her throat angrily. Takes a few breaths. “I was also a mother.”

Crowley feels something adjacent to pain shoot through his chest. An empathy that shouldn’t exist in him. Something that should have been left in Heaven. He looks up at her, glad for the dark glasses hiding the emotion in his eyes. “Adrielle, I—” he breaks off.

What do you say to someone whose world has already ended?

She squeezes her eyes shut. Clears her throat again. Nods. “I’ll take first watch tonight.”

Crowley doesn’t argue.

He hadn’t intended to sleep. His plan had been to close his eyes and lie still for a few hours, while Adrielle sat watch. But when he puts his back to the fire, he finds himself drifting off, wondering who she might have been in a different life. Who she might become in this one.

He dreams of floods.

* * *

He hadn’t bothered to get his hopes up when he saw the town in the distance. The smell reaches them when they’re still a kilometer out, confirming his assumptions. They have been away from civilization long enough that the smell comes as a shock. It’s funny what a week in the wilderness will do.

“Do you want to go around?” he asks.

“I don’t see any roads. I’d rather not risk breaking a wheel on the terrain here.” She takes a shaky breath. “Bad place to get stuck.”

He considers teasing her about the wagon again, but sees the terror in her eyes, takes in her tense shoulders and white knuckles on the reins, and knows this isn’t a mood that should be lightened. “Through then?”

She grimaces and nods.

“It’ll be quick,” he says softly.

She grunts.

The town isn’t abandoned, but it may as well be. Most doors have a red X painted on them in rushed, dripping brushstrokes. A few windows are left uncovered, only to have shutters quickly slammed shut as they pass. Why anyone would stay in this cursed place is beyond anything Crowley can guess, but he finds he doesn’t have the energy to dwell on it. The smell is overpowering and the horses are growing restless.

In his peripherals, he can see the bodies piled between houses. He can hear the rats clustering and scrabbling around them. He tries not to focus on either, putting his attention toward getting through this place instead. Adrielle’s breath is starting to come shallow and useless through her teeth as they work their way through the main road of the town, and he knows panic is clawing at her edges, trying to find a way in.

Briefly, he considers laying a hand on her forearm and forcing some calm over her. It would be a simple thing. She might not even notice anything inhuman about it.

But he thinks better of it, taking a few steps ahead of the wagon to walk alongside the horses instead. The closer horse snorts and shakes its head at his approach, but he places a hand on its neck, weaving slender fingers up into its mane. His eyes flutter closed long enough for the serpent and the angel in his voice to shine through, and murmurs under his breath to the animal. It’s a balm— one he knows will fade as soon as he removes his hand. The scales will tip back to center and the horse will go back to regarding him uneasily. For now though, a calm falls over both animals.

Crowley keeps his hand on the horse and his back to Adrielle until they make it through the town. For the rest of the day, they travel in silence.

* * *

** September, 1349 **

“Why don’t you ever take those off?”

Crowley stares at her from across the campfire. “Pardon?” He knows she means the glasses. He intends to make her say what she means.

“The spectacles,” she says, rolling her eyes. He takes her annoyance as a good sign. Being annoyed is better than the alternative, he figures. He tries to annoy her at least once a day. “It’s the middle of the night and you’re wearing dark lenses.”

“Bit of a rude question, don’t you think?”

She shrugs and pokes and the embers with a stick. “Just a question. Honestly though, how do you see?”

“In greyscale.”

She makes her characteristic _pfff_ sound. “You know what I meant.”

“I’ve an eye condition,” he says lightly. “Colors are… confusing. ‘S’just easier this way.”

She studies him silently, staring into him with an intense curiosity he’d forgotten humans could possess. He supposes the fact that she’s the only living human he’s seen in weeks has something to do with the feeling.

“You should try and sleep,” he says. “I saw how early you were up with the horses. I’ll take first watch.”

“You’ll actually wake me before morning this time?”

“If you like.”

* * *

Crowley knows when she has nightmares. They radiate out of her with the intensity of a star, and he feels every one.

Sometimes, when they drag her into consciousness, she remains motionless, keeping her back to him and feigning sleep, a slightly quickened breath the only physical indicator. He never bothers her in these times. He merely continues his watch, trusting her to seek conversation or demand a turn at guard duty if that’s what she needs. Often she will drift back to sleep after a period of staring into the darkness.

Other times, the dreams will catch her without her defenses in place, and she will cry. Great, heaving sobs that tear her from sleep and twist their way through her mercilessly. The first time this happened, he had been startled and tried to talk to her. She had glared at him with eyes full of daggers, pulling away from him as violently as if he had struck her. Then she had stumbled to her feet and stalked off into the darkness to deal with her demons alone.

The sky had been paling to grey when she returned, eyes bloodshot and forehead damp with sweat. He was still sitting by the cooling embers where she had left him, thinking about oceans and floods. He’d looked up at her placidly as she had drifted back to camp.

“Better?”

“No.” She had said, sinking to the ground with the dying fire between them. “Calmer though.”

Tonight, he feels the dreams bleeding out of her before she wakes. He forces an inhuman stillness over himself in preparation, and waits to see what she will do.

She flutters awake with a small start, her breathing short and erratic. It’s a few minutes before she sits up and turns to face him, drawing her knees close to her chest. She lifts her eyes briefly to the sky, then drops them back to the embers between them.

“No stars tonight,” she mutters.

“It’s cloudy. Will probably rain soon.”

She grunts and toes at the ashes around the edge of the fire. “Did you catch it?” She scrubs at her face with her palms. “The plague, I mean.”

“No. I don’t really… get sick.”

“Lucky you,” she grumbles, running her hands behind her head to lock fingers behind her neck and elbows around her knees. She looks very small, folded in on herself like this. “I did,” she says, eyes fixed on the ground.

She seems to want to talk tonight, so Crowley leans into it.

“I’d say recovering makes you the lucky one between us.”

She exhales a quick burst through her nose. Almost an Adrielle scoff. An Adrielle scoff but exhausted. “I thought— I was so _sure_ I was going to die. I almost wonder if I did, and all of this is just… whatever’s next. Sometimes I wish—” She closes her eyes and takes a breath. “I wish that I had.”

“Waste of a wish, if you ask me.”

Her breathing starts to come back under her control, and she glowers at him from across the fire. Anger is inching back into her voice when she speaks again. “He took everything, Anthony. Fucking _everything_. Everyone I loved. Everyone I _hated_. Anything that mattered. Just. _Stolen_.”

He blinks in confusion, momentarily thinking she’s personified a pandemic. “Who?”

“God. The devil. Take your pick.”

“Ah. Them.”

“ _Why_?” she growls through gritted teeth. The dying embers glint off her eyes in a way that even Crowley has to admit looks impressive. “Why take all of them but leave me? I don’t want this, whatever _this_ is. I don’t want _any_ of it. It doesn’t—”

“Adrielle,” he interrupts. “You’ll drive yourself mad if you keep trying to apply logic to all this.” he tilts his head back and gazes up into the starless sky. “It’s chaos, and the chaos is the _point_. Sometimes, the world rejoices, and it’s beautiful. Sometimes, it screams, and it’s utter misery. Always, it’s honest. We just have bad timing, that’s all.”

She seethes on this for a while, her anger a palpable force. Eventually, she mutters, “It’s utter _bullshit_ , is what it is.”

Crowley just sighs. He doesn’t expect a millennia-old lesson to sink in over the course of one fleeting tragedy. This isn’t the first time the world has ended. It won’t be the last. He says the words anyway, unsure if he’s saying them for her benefit or his own.

“You can’t have creation without its shadow.”

“Oh, fuck off,” she says with a scoff.

* * *

“I told you you wouldn’t like sleeping under the wagon.”

Adrielle scowls at him. “I never said I’d _like_ it.”

The rain had started a few days ago. A dismal grey drizzle at first that slowly grew to a steady patter as the days wore on. True to her word, Adrielle refused to set foot in the wagon and instead had dragged her bedding underneath it at night. The wagon shielded her from the water falling directly on her from the sky, but not from the mud pooling around her on the ground.

When the sun rose, it was from behind a heavy downpour. Adrielle and the rolling hills both looked damp, grey, and miserable.

“Let’s double back,” Crowley says, looking up at the darkening clouds. “There was that little farming village we passed yesterday.”

“The empty one?”

“Not like anyone’s using it. We might as well hole up for a few days while this rain passes. Besides, it’s not like we’ve got a schedule to keep.”

She sighs.

“I’m sure the horses would appreciate the break. Might as well not risk getting caught in a storm.”

“You’re saying we should break into someone’s home.”

“The way I see it, they’re no one’s homes anymore.”

She glares at him with a fierceness he tries not to find endearing.

“There was a barn we could set up in if that would rest easier on your conscience.”

“ _Fine_ ,” she says, placing a hand on one of the horses. Then, softer, “Fine.”

* * *

**October, 1349**

“Where did you find _that_?”

She pauses in her task of brushing the horses long enough to eye the bottle in Crowley’s hand suspiciously.

“House across the field had a cellar,” he says, setting the wine bottle and his satchel on the floor of the barn. He takes off his coat and shakes the water out, hanging it to dry over a barrel. “Found some potatoes there too.”

When she narrows her eyes at him, he says with an exasperated sigh, “It was _abandoned_. Would you rather I leave it all to rot?”

“It just feels strange is all,” she says with a frown, then turns her attention back to the horses. “I don’t like getting used to things being like this. It… doesn’t bother you?”

“Of course it _bothers_ me, but I’m not about to starve on principle.”

“Yes, because you eat _so_ much,” she mutters.

He smiles inwardly at her irritation as he props the barn door open and busies himself with making a campfire and setting food to cook.

They’ve been set up in the barn for two days now, waiting out a heavy bout of rain. Adrielle had vehemently refused the idea of sleeping in any of the abandoned houses, insisting there were lines she would not cross. This was fine by Crowley, who didn’t see any point in mentioning that all the houses he had explored while foraging were so steeped in the stink of sickness and rot that they might as well be haunted, for how unwelcoming they were.

The barn had simply smelled of hay, and had an awning over one of its doors that allowed them to have a cooking fire in spite of the rain. Adrielle seemed much more at ease when she could stay near the horses, and Crowley had found her peace of mind, however relative, strangely contagious. So this abandoned barn in a forgotten farmer’s field on the outskirts of an unnamed village had become a homebase for a few days.

When she finishes with the horses, she drags a bucket over to the campfire, turning it upside down and perching on it like a stool. Crowley works the cork out of the bottle, pours two cups, and hands one to her.

“Dinner is at the mercy of time, I’m afraid,” he says, gesturing at the small pot over the fire.

She nods stoically and stares into the coals. It only takes a few seconds before her attention drifts away and she’s lost in her thoughts. The fire crackles softly, a mesmerizing addition to the drone and drip of the rain and the occasional sigh from the horses. It’s a strange sort of peace they’ve found in the sanctuary of this barn— a bubble of calm floating over a sea of terrors. A feeling so out of place against the past few years that it feels like a dream.

Adrielle shakes herself from her reverie and, seeming to remember she has a cup in her hands, lifts it and gives it a sniff.

“Salutaria,” Crowley says, dragging himself from his own daydreams and lifting his cup into the space between them.

She frowns in confusion, but clinks her cup against his anyway. “Salutaria?” she asks, taking a sip.

“It’s a toast. ‘To your health’,” he responds, taking a sip of his own. The wine is surprisingly palatable. Not _good_ by any stretch, but certainly better than anything he would have expected from an abandoned farm in the middle of the plague-ravaged countryside. “Or maybe it’s safety. I can never remember.”

Adrielle rolls her eyes. “I got that much from context. Where’s it _from_? What language is that?”

One side of Crowley’s mouth quirks into a fleeting smile. “It’s Latin,” he says. “Picked it up when I lived in Rome.”

“Rome,” she breathes, peering at him curiously over her cup. “I don’t think I would have placed you in Rome. Are you… _from_ there?”

“Nah. It was just— a place that fit. For a while.”

She lowers her cup to her lap, falling very still. It’s a stillness he’s seen come over her several times now— a hush that seems almost inhuman for how slow her breathing becomes and how little her eyes move. It’s not a distressed sort of stillness. Rather, it seems as though she slows down everything but her mind, putting all her physical effort into being an observer. He thinks it might be simple pensiveness, but at times, it feels like something more complicated. The intense desire to learn and understand, held back by unseen constraints.

He watches her out of the corner of his eye and continues talking about Rome, letting whimsy guide his voice.

“There was this restaurant in Rome that served oysters like I’ve never had anywhere else. I don’t know if it was the preparation, or something in the sauce that came with them, or— Christ, the place could have been filled with drugged incense for how magical it felt. Petronius did truly _remarkable_ things with oysters. You’d swear you were transported to another _world_.”

He pauses, letting thoughts of the surreal sensory dreamscape carry him away for a moment as he stares out into the dark curtain of rain. His mind had been dancing so carefully around the core of the memory— Aziraphale at the center of everything, the still point of the turning world. He closes his eyes and allows himself to land on the thought, feeling like a leaf settling on the surface of a lake.

“They served flowers as a side dish there,” he says distantly. “These delicate little salads with marigolds on top. Hell of a thing. Never had anything like it before or since.”

“Marigolds?” he hears Adrielle say quietly. He opens his eyes in time to see a faint smile tugging mechanically at her mouth, fading before it can reach her eyes.

“Yep.”

“The little sunny ones, right?”

“That’s them. Turns out they taste _peppery_.”

She exhales sharply through her nose and lifts her cup to drink. “Never would have thought to eat a flower. My—” She pauses and takes in a deep breath. “My brother always loved flowers. He found ways to grow them, even when we were travelling. He had all these little pots that he filled with seeds from every place we passed through. I built holders for them so we could fasten all his flowerpots to the outside of the wagon. I don’t remember what town he found marigolds in, but there was a cluster of them that we kept near the front. Sunny little things,” she says, her voice growing softer and her eyes going glassy as she speaks. “Chamomile and pansies and zinnias too. Mother would tease him about being a romantic who ‘put down roots’ everywhere he went.”

Her attention wanders away for a moment before she returns to herself with a small start. “Petya’s travelling garden,” she murmurs into her cup, grief pulsing out of her like a heartbeat.

They watch the rain together in silence for a spell before conversation returns to the stable center they’ve both become accustomed to— short staccato bursts of questions and answers, thinly veiled sarcasm, endearing scoffs. But for all their verbal jabs and friendly bickering, Crowley never teases her about the wagon again.

* * *

“What kind of art?”

Crowley arches an eyebrow and looks sideways to where she sits at the head of the wagon. He is in his usual position, walking alongside the horses, lost in his own thoughts. “Uh.”

“You said you were an artist once. Did you paint? Sculpt?”

They had been back on the road for a week now, the rain letting up enough to allow travel again. He had been lost in the slow, hypnotic pull of the path disappearing under his feet, the steady rhythm of the horses’ hooves. Her question catches him off guard. He’s unsure if she’s making conversation for the sake of filling the silence or if she actually wants to know. “I, uh— It’s… hard to explain.”

The familiar scoff comes from the driver’s seat. “We have time. Unless you don’t want to talk about it.”

“No, it’s alright. It’s—” his thoughts drift away for a second. He thinks of stars. Remembers moons. The feeling of nebulae under his fingertips. The taste of stardust.

He thinks of Joriel and spilled ink. Tries to remember who he had been.

“It’s really just that. Hard to explain.”

She grunts and nods, seeming to accept that as the end of it.

Crowley sighs. “It was similar to painting. A different kind of pigment though— more like ink. It dried very fast and didn’t leave room for error. Things often ended up disastrous.”

“ _Disastrous_?”

“Yes.”

“Seems like a dramatic word choice for a painting.”

He snorts, then takes a moment to muse on the fact that he’s picked up her habit. “All disasters are subjective, I suppose. To me, then, it was disastrous, yes.”

She hums at this, nods in understanding, and the grief rooted in her pulses out at him briefly.

“What did you paint?” she asks after a period of silence.

“It was… a new technique I was trying. It never really caught on, but I would try to paint sound.”

“How on Earth—”

“I would listen to a sound—like a song or just a sound in nature—and I would try to figure out what it looked like.”

“Huh.”

“I told you. Hard to explain.”

She frowns thoughtfully. “That must have been interesting without color.”

An uncomfortable jolt of adrenaline surges through Crowley’s center. He thinks of delicate shadows cast in blue and pale periwinkle, dark and glittering sapphire, bright flashes of silver and steel. He thinks of how dull the world appears without them. “Color?” he asks distantly.

“Your eyes.”

“Ah. Well. They weren’t always like this. There was… an accident.”

“Hmm.” She rides in silence for a few minutes, lost in thought. Crowley had braced himself for questions or banalities in response to this, but they never come. Instead, she says, “Perhaps charcoals.”

“Ch— What?”

“Pencils. You can still make art in greyscale.” Then she shrugs. “If you like.”

* * *

**November, 1349**

“Do you think it’s safe?”

“ _Safe_?” Crowley says, crossing his arms and arching an eyebrow at her. “No place is really _safe_ right now, but it doesn’t look like it’s overrun by bandits if that’s what you mean.”

She glares at him and lets out a scoff that Crowley swears he can hear before it even leaves her mouth. “I mean the _plague_ , you asshole. But now that you mention it, it very well could be full of bandits.”

“We can go around if you’re worried,” he says, leaning against the wagon. “Backtrack to that fork in the road. Might be a good idea to get some news though. Been a while since we’ve seen a town this lively.”

He doesn’t mention the weather. How he’s been growing increasingly worried about the chill settling over the autumn nights. He’s been subtly increasing the temperature of the ground she sleeps on, but there are only so many minor acts of demonic willpower he can chance before someone notices. Hell may have their hands full right now, but he’s not about to test the limits of what he can get away with.

That familiar stillness falls over her as she stares at the town in the distance. Then she nods. “I’d rather not backtrack,” she says, nudging the horses ahead. “News would be good.”

* * *

The town had been touched by the plague earlier in the year. Casualties had been low, and after the sickness had moved on, life began to settle into its new version of normalcy— melancholy and diminished, but persisting. Crowley and Adrielle had been met with trepidation at first, but when it became clear they didn’t carry the disease with them, the townsfolk were open to exchanging news.

They had rented rooms in the modest inn, welcoming thin straw mattresses like an extraordinary luxury after months of sleeping on the ground, and then they’d taken to prowling the town in their own ways. Adrielle would go out during the day, seeing to the horses in the stables and talking to the locals, while Crowley would sit in the common room of the inn, nursing a mug of watery ale as he watched and listened to the flow of people.

In this way, he learns about the plague’s path through Europe— the devastation in Munich, more talk of abandoned villages, whispers that it had crossed the channel and found a foothold in England. He hears rumors about flagellants. Stories about the end of the world. Arguments about whether blame belongs to cats or rats or God or the devil.

But it’s the old fisherman talking about the lighthouses that hooks him. Lights along the coast winking out as their keepers succumb to the illness.

He buys the sailor a drink, pulls him aside, and feels a new sort of mournful silence settle in him as he falls into the stories of a coastline going dark.

* * *

Adrielle slides into the seat across from him and sets her knife down on the table. “Will you help me with something?”

Crowley looks up from the map he had been studying and frowns at her. “Probably,” he says slowly. “What do you need?”

“A haircut.”

“Wh—”

“It’s too long.”

“With _that_?”

“I sharpened it. And cleaned it.” She sighs. “I can’t reach the back. Will you help?”

He looks between the knife and her a few times. “Alright.”

“Good. Come on.” She stands and heads upstairs to her room. He folds his map, tucks it in his coat, and follows her.

The room is sparse. A bed with a battered wooden trunk at the foot, a chair, A window with sun-bleached curtains. She drags the chair to the middle of the room and holds out the knife to him, handle first.

“It’s probably not going to look… nice, done like this,” he says, accepting the blade.

She scoffs at him. “I don’t need it to look _nice_. It’s probably better if it doesn’t.”

“Hrm. How short then?” he asks.

“Short. Above the shoulder at least. To the ears if you can manage it. It just needs to be easy to hide inside a hat.”

He steps up behind the chair and takes a moment to assess the job in front of him. Her hair is very long, hanging halfway down her back in thick dark tangles. He tries to recall ever seeing her touch it, but can’t remember a single instance beyond angrily shoving it out of her eyes. He’s never seen her comb it or braid it or even take pains to keep it clean. It’s not a vanity for her. It’s simply a burden.

He carefully loops his hand through the dark curtain, pulling a thick strand gently away from her neck, careful not to touch her skin. He places the edge of the knife against it and begins to unceremoniously saw off the first hank of hair. “What brought this on?”

“I’m not staying here. I’ve been talking with Francesca and I’ll be heading east with her within a week. Travel will be easier if I look like a man.”

She states it all very matter-of-factly, as though listing what she planned to have for dinner.

“What about clothes?” he asks.

“I made some trousers. Repurposed my skirts into bags or blankets or just rags if nothing else could be done with them.”

“And Francesca?” Crowley asks, dropping the first lock to the floor and going to work on the next. “You trust her?”

Adrielle shrugs. “As much as anyone.” Then, quieter, “She’s lost much too.”

He hums in understanding at this and continues his work in silence, her hair gathering in dark piles around their feet. _Like soot_ , he thinks. _Dirty snowdrifts. Ashes._

With the bulk of it gone, he turns the knife on its side to use as a razor, scraping off the rough edges as best he can. The tool works better in this regard than he had expected, and Crowley feels a rush of respect for her and the job she’s done with sharpening the blade.

“Don’t make it look too good,” she says.

Crowley snorts. “Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you look thoroughly terrible. Hold this?” he says, handing her the knife.

He weaves both hands loosely into her now-shaggy hair and gives them a quick shake. A fine dusting of loose hairs drift to the ground to join their fellows. Taking the knife back from her, he goes in for one more pass with the edge of the blade, cleaning up the rough edges as best he can. Despite his best efforts, as he crops her hair around her ears, his fingertips brush against her skin.

There’s no whiff of apples or images of the orchard. Crowley had not expected there to be. He has touched humans before—it would be impossible to avoid completely, sharing a planet with so many of them for so long—but it’s been decades. Whether it’s intentional or subconscious, it’s a thing he has avoided since he came to associate touch with the scent of apples. With the ethereal orchard. With Aziraphale.

His fingertips brush over her ear with a feather touch and he feels nothing at all. In a flash, he’s reminded that for all her fight and fury and determination, she’s still just human. Her light, as bright and tenacious as it is, will someday burn out.

“What’s east?” he asks, pushing down a surge of unexpected emotion.

“Poland. Francesca’s parents have a farm there. Word is the plague hasn’t reached that far.”

“Hm. Seems as good a direction as any.”

When he finishes with her hair, he circles around to stand in front of the chair. He crosses his arms and leans back to examine her.

“How does it look?”

Crowley gives her a smile that he hopes doesn’t look sad. “Wretched.”

She nods, satisfied. “Excellent. Good work.”

He grunts and nods in return, then flips the knife over and hands the hilt back to her.

* * *

Adrielle finds him before she leaves. He’s leaning over the map again, studying the coastline with his chin resting in his palm and the fingers of his free hand drumming on the table. She’s dressed in trousers and a plain wool workshirt, a heavy travelling cloak on her shoulders and her hair hidden under a hat. She strides across the common room and stands across the table from him.

Crowley looks up at her and takes a moment to be impressed with how easily she’s slipped into this new role. Everything about her demeanor has shifted. If he didn’t know her, his eyes would slide right over her, taking in a common and nondescript man before immediately forgetting him.

Without a word, he folds the map, tucks it away, and stands to follow her outside.

Francesca is securing the horses to the wagon and exchanges a nod with Adrielle when they step outside. She shoots Crowley a wary glance before going back to her work.

“You’ll be alright?” Adrielle asks him.

He snorts softly. “Me? Yes, I’ll be fine.”

“Are you still going north? Following up on the lighthouses?”

Crowley nods. The thought of seeing the sea is the first thing that’s sparked his interest in almost two years. And it’s not like he has anywhere better to go.

Adrielle crosses her arms and studies him closely, the deep stillness settling behind her eyes as she does. It passes as quickly as it falls over her, and she nods once in return. “Hm. Well then. Good luck.” She pauses long enough to take a quick breath, a sad expression flickering briefly over her face. Then she holds out her hand to him.

Crowley blinks, then accepts the offered hand. She stares at him very steadily. “Thank you, my friend,” she says with uncharacteristic softness.

There’s a swell of some new emotion in his chest at the gesture—a rapport, a genuine concern for her well-being, a warmth rooted in their briefly shared journey—and he reaches up to shake her hand with both of his, willing every blessing Aziraphale has ever taught him through his palms. If she notices, she says nothing.

“You as well,” he says.

Then she’s gone.

Crowley stands as still as a painting, watching the wagon until it’s out of sight. He heads north later that day.

* * *

**January, 1350**

He had given Amsterdam a wide berth, not having any interest in seeing the plague’s effect on another large city. Instead, he made his way to the coastline, following the path of the sea north and east to the Frisian Islands. It had been cold, dark, and rainswept to the point where the water seemed to come from below as much as above, but he’d found that as long as he kept moving, the smell of the salt marshes was distraction enough to fuel his journey. He had welcomed the smell of the sea like an old friend, strong and stern and terrible as it forced away the lingering smell of sickness and rot.

Some things, as it turns out, are stronger than death.

From the wetlands, it had taken him several days to find a boat willing to take him to the island. In the end, a greased palm and a few honeyed words had been enough to convince a fisherman to take him to Terschelling. The man had deposited him on the shore near the village and hurried back to the mainland, suddenly wondering what had compelled him to row out to these godforsaken islands in the middle of winter.

From where he stands on the shore, Crowley can just see the top of the tower to the west, jutting dark and abandoned above the crest of the hill. He begins his hike over the blustery dunes.

There is a small fishing village before he reaches the tower— a dock with a few boats moored, clusters of houses set into the squat hills overlooking the coast, a rough road hewn through the center of it all with what looks like an inn or a pub set to one side. A place for sailors to exchange news and stories. A final pit stop between Amsterdam and the North Sea. He turns from his path and makes his way into the inn.

The main room is dim, but has a homey feel to it. It smells of beer and old wood, a waft of seafood from the kitchen and a hint of woodsmoke from the hearth. Besides a man sitting in the corner with his hand wrapped around a mug and a map spread over his table, Crowley is the only patron. He winds his way through the tables to the bar, leaning on it and nodding to the barkeep who is eyeing him warily.

“Pisser of a day,” Crowley says. “I’ll take whatever you’re pouring.”

The man’s frown deepens as he fills a mug. “New to Friesland, then?” he says, passing the drink across the counter.

He nods and takes a sip. It’s drinkable. Not good, but drinkable. “I’m the new lighthouse keeper.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Spot the Eliot, win a cookie.


	13. The only one this century to remind you all is fine

**1347, by Earth’s time**

Heaven is far brighter than he remembers it. Blindingly bright. Light—achromatic and sourceless—radiates from all directions, throwing every surface into shocking clarity, too harsh and ubiquitous to allow for even a suggestion of shadows.

Shades of grey are an impossibility in Heaven.

Logically, Aziraphale _knows_ that this is how it has always been— a colorless and odorless and tasteless place. That there is no need for earthly sensations when not on Earth (most angels question their usefulness even then). That up here, he is simply the embodiment of his grace, his mind, and his righteousness. He had been _prepared_ for this.

Some things, as it turns out, cannot be prepared for.

He stands in the main hall, hands clasped tightly behind him and the globe pointedly at his back, and tries to listen to the approaching footsteps instead of the small irrational part of him that’s recoiling from his surroundings. He takes a deep, unnecessary breath and tries not to think about Florence. Michael and Gabriel march into his view, and he forces his mind away from thoughts of the sea storm he left behind on Earth.

“Aziraphale,” Gabriel says, flashing a toothy smile and spreading his hands in front of him. “Welcome home.”

Aziraphale’s fingers twist white-knuckled around each other behind his back, but he manages not to grimace. “Hello, Gabriel,” he says with a nod. “Michael.”

Michael acknowledges his presence with the barest inclination of her head and an almost imperceptible twitch of her eyebrows. “It’s been a long time, Aziraphale.”

“Ah. Yes. Well. Lots to do! On Earth!” he babbles, lifting slightly on the balls of his feet with each exclamation. Michael stares at him stonily, completely unreadable. _Absolutely colorless, both of them. For Earth’s sake, how does one navigate without color? Surely I did it once._ “Humanity keeps me _very_ busy. Always on my toes.”

“Right now they’re keeping all of us on our toes,” Gabriel says. “What with all the dying.”

“Erm—”

“But!” he continues brightly, clapping his hands together. “You don’t need to worry about _that_. Europe will shake itself out, so in the meantime, let’s focus on what you’ve been up to for the past five millennia and find new ways to keep you out of trouble. We don’t want another Peter of Atroa on our hands, now do we?”

“R— Right.” He racks his brain, trying to think of something, _anything_ , he can report, but he feels stuck in the quicksand of Crowley’s voice echoing through him.

 _A real reckoning. They’re just leaving the whole continent to this rot then? When is it ever my lot_ _doing the_ real _atrocities?_

“Well,” he manages, “ _Florence_ is… er—”

Michael stops him by lifting a hand. “The archives, principality. Zophiel is expecting you.”

“Five thousand years worth of paperwork isn’t exactly something you’re going to do in the main hall,” Gabriel says, grinning like a dead-eyed jackal. “Best get a move on.”

Aziraphale feels distantly thankful for an excuse to get away from the Archangels, but too lost in shock to register much else. He hands the controls over to his muscle memory, bumbling out affirmations, then lets his feet take him away from the main hall and through the bright corridors that lead to the archives.

He lets memories of the place run through his mind as he walks, hoping to prime himself for another shock to the senses, but feels his heart drop as he rounds the final corner and sees the archives for the first time in over five thousand years. The place that used to be his home, his passion, his entire purpose. That he hadn’t wanted to leave and has never been able to fully shake the influence of.

The appearance is very much the same. A massive circular room, its walls lined with shelves and cubbies, stretching up and disappearing into ethereal brightness. Tables are arranged in concentric circles on the ground, a chronicler working at each one. And in the center of the room, the Archangel Zophiel sits at their desk, absorbed in the papers in front of them.

The feeling of the archives, however, is very different. There is no rustling of _home_ in Aziraphale’s heart as he stands in the entrance and takes it in. The warm glow he had once felt at the sight of this place does not bloom in his center. Instead, the blinding, pervasive _brightness_ that floods the space leaves him feeling cold and anxious.

The logical explanation, of course, is that this is not a place for principalities. When his purpose had been reassigned, so too had his grace, and this is simply a matter of angelic biology. But it’s not flaming swords he’s dwelling on as he stands rooted in the entrance to the archives.

It’s gardens. It’s color and sound, the feeling of rain on his face and the smell it brings with it, the awe planted in him by Earth’s seas and forests and cities. It’s amber and gold glimmering softly in the chambers of his mind, the taste of grapes and marigolds bursting in his mouth, images of wildflowers springing into his peripheral vision unbidden.

Zophiel flicks their eyes up from the desk, gives Aziraphale a small nod and beckons him over, before dropping their gaze back to their work. Forcing his mind away from thoughts of Earth, he forges a path through the chroniclers and approaches the desk.

The Archangel of wisdom is exactly as he remembers them— long dark hair bound behind them in a sensible braid, elegant fingers splayed across the tome in front of them, their darting eyes across the page the only hint of movement in their entire body. Shock and anxiety and panic all come to a head within Aziraphale as he approaches, and he is suddenly overcome with the image of the head chronicler as a soul trapped within a statue which has not moved from this spot since the birth of time. He suppresses a deranged giggle at the thought.

“Hello, Aziraphale. Welcome back,” they say in their calm, musical voice without lifting their eyes. “You’ve spoken with Gabriel then?”

“Er— Yes? He said something about paperwork and being expected here.”

Zophiel looks up at him, their eyes bright and alert and boring into him. “You are being audited, Aziraphale,” they say matter-of-factly.

“I’m— Aud— I beg your pardon?”

“Gabriel has deemed this an appropriate time to revisit your communications from the past–” their eyes flit down to the desk briefly, then back up to Aziraphale, “–5,351 years on Earth.”

Aziraphale’s blood runs somehow colder. _The Arrangement. Oh_ hell _, they know about the Arrangement._ “I see,” he says softly.

“Please. Sit.” They gesture to an empty seat beside them.

A gleaming stack of papers sits on the desk in front of them, the first line reading, ‘ _Garden of Eden, 4004 BC. Principality Aziraphale: assigned to eastern gate._ ’

“This will take some time,” Zophiel says.

* * *

** Tlatelolco - 1441  **

If this truly is to be his last view of Earth, at least it’s beautiful. A sky that stretches forever. Distant snow-peaked mountains as a backdrop to the rolling green hills which encircle the lush valley. A brackish lake nestled at the heart of the basin. The small island at the center of it all.

As memories go, it seems a nice one to close the book on.

The city takes up the entirety of the island, canals and causeways segmenting it into a tidy grid that is accessible to both canoes and foot traffic. Tenochtitlan is a stunning feat of human ingenuity— the dams which isolate the fresh water from the salt, the floating gardens, the elaborate causeways attaching the island to the mainland. And an attention to beauty as well as function, found in the art, the temples, and the towering pyramids at the center of the city, visible from every spot on the island.

The marigolds, however, seem an almost cruel flourish.

Aziraphale has been wandering aimlessly through the market for what feels like hours, trying to find one perch or corner or vendor or _anything_ that isn’t covered in marigolds. Garlands of the yellow and orange blooms festoon the stands, petals are scattered at his feet, people wear the flowers in their hair and on their clothes. Marigolds are so prevalent that even the smell of them—normally subtle to the point of nonexistence—lingers in the air, a musky tang under the stronger smells of the lake and the market.

The missive ordering him back to head office after only two months planetside had been a deep cut. Gabriel’s not-so-subtle note about how ‘with any luck’ Aziraphale wouldn’t be needed on Earth at all anymore and how the position was better suited to a _chronicler_ had been salt in the wound. Tlatelolco’s market screaming a reminder about exactly _how much_ he will be leaving behind feels like more weight than his heart can bear.

_Just… try to enjoy it. There’s nothing you can do to help humanity in one day, so you might as well savor the sun and the sky and the water one last time. At least you get to end on marigolds instead of a sea storm._

With a dull wave of melancholy, he thinks he would have preferred the sea.

He resigns himself to the fact that, unless he travels to the mainland, he’s not going to escape marigolds while he’s here. Even that might not be a sure thing, given how the flower seems to thrive here. So he begins looking for a distraction instead; something to keep his hands busy, if not his mind. Maybe even a souvenir, if he can find something interesting enough to convince Zophiel it has merit.

He’s examining a small flute and pointedly ignoring the garland of marigolds the vendor is offering him when he hears the commotion behind him, loud and shrill enough to cut through the heavy din of the market. He turns to see two merchants grappling with a young girl— one of them holding the back of her shift and the other trying to wrestle something out of her hands while the girl shrieks and kicks like a trapped rabbit. Aziraphale’s Náhuatl isn’t fluent enough to catch every word flowing out of her mouth, but judging by the reactions of the merchants and the gathering crowd, there are some extremely creative curses being thrown about.

He stands and stares for a moment, transfixed by the chaotic scene. The raw outburst of emotion, set against the powerful colors and sounds and smells of the market, manages to be at once jarring and soothing. An entirely _human_ display, this turmoil building over what he assumes is something as minor as a stolen trinket. Something that none of them are likely to remember in a few days’ time, but seems a proper disaster in this moment.

 _Well. One of them might_ , he thinks, biting his lip as he watches the panicked child rage against adults she has no hope of besting. The flute forgotten, he crosses the causeway and joins the crowd.

“ _There_ you are,” he says, peering down at the girl. Turning to the merchant holding her, he pulls out his money pouch and starts counting cacao beans into his palm. “Terribly sorry. Don’t know what’s gotten into her. What do I owe you?”

The merchant frowns at Aziraphale, then yelps in pain as the girl starts stomping on his foot. “Two hundred,” he growls, pulling her off his foot and holding her at bay by her shift.

Aziraphale scoffs and rolls his eyes, but not having any other real use for the money in the next day, and certainly not having the energy to push the issue, he tips the handful of cacao beans back into the bag and holds it out to the man.

The merchant raises his eyebrows, then puffs out an incredulous laugh and lets go of the girl to accept. When Aziraphale turns to smile down at her, she’s clutching the trinket to her chest and glaring up at him.

She lets out an angry cry, kicks him in the shin, and runs away.

He blinks after her for a moment. Then, curious and worried and thankful to have found a distraction, he follows the little storm cloud through the market.

* * *

** 1379, by Earth’s time **

One year. He had managed to get one year on Earth to himself before being called back.

Even getting that much had been a risk, but after thirty years without leaving his seat beside Zophiel, the cold anxiety in his center sapping all his focus and willpower, the risk seemed more than reasonable. A carefully worded report about the ‘ _time sensitive importance of observing the far-reaching effects of the plague in Europe_ ’ sent through the right channels had done the trick. Zophiel had simply nodded, marked their place in Aziraphale’s file, and bid him an interesting trip.

The assignment in Australia hadn’t put him in the sort of hub that he’d become accustomed to, but he absolutely did not care. It put ground under his feet, sunlight on his skin, and gave him back taste and smell and _color_. And while the country had no grapes or marigolds that he could find, the coastline that he had done his tour of was comforting in a unique and unexpected way.

Salt on the breeze and seafood for every meal kicked at a spark within him like an ember in a dying fire, prodding the anger and stubbornness back to life that three decades of defending himself against Gabriel’s merciless audit has suppressed.

Perhaps most importantly, the ‘time sensitive assignment’ had gotten him to the planet in time to see Icarus.

He had laid flat on his back in the dunes, listening to the waves, savoring the balmy weight of tropical humidity, and staring at the comet until it faded from the sky. Pinpointing the exact second it disappeared from view had felt deeply important in that moment, feeling the ache of longing and regret take root in him as the sky started to turn grey.

_The last thing we did was argue. I can’t even remember what my last words to you were. Or yours to me. The sea was so loud…_

“Is something troubling you,” Zophiel asks.

“Hmm? Oh. No,” Aziraphale says, shaking himself out of the memory. “Just thinking.”

“You’ve been staring at that page for _quite_ a long time.”

“Yes well, I’m afraid I have no real memory of…” Aziraphale squints at the page in front of him, “using a miracle to rid my robe of an unpleasant odor in 915 BC.”

“I think perhaps that is part of the point of this exercise,” Zophiel says evenly, their voice betraying no emotion. “To make sure you truly understand frivolity.”

Aziraphale casts his mind out to sea, reaching for a bead of indignation and swallowing it down. He knows better than to let it out, and he is cognizant enough to know that Zophiel isn’t the one who would deserve it if he did, but he clings to it anyway, relishing in feeling _something_ besides dread in this cold and colorless place.

He accumulates anger in a slow drip like this for eighteen years. When he feels he can no longer contain it effectively, he submits another report about the ‘ _necessity of a periodic agent on the ground during this pivotal time in human history_ ’ and is granted a six month assignment in India.

* * *

** Tlatelolco - 1441  **

It takes Aziraphale the better part of an hour before he finds the girl. Her path through the city is easy enough to follow once he hones in on her, but her pace is another matter. As far as he can tell, she doesn’t stop running as she bobs and weaves her way through the market, occasionally barrelling into people or stalls.

Aziraphale tries to puzzle her out as he follows in her wake.

She’s young— her skirt is knee-length, meaning she can’t be much older than five. At first glance, she appears well taken care of. Her hair and clothes are clean and kempt, her sandals look new, and she doesn’t try to steal any food that Aziraphale can see.

She has a powerful temper, and isn’t afraid to let it flare up even when it’s a fight she can’t win. Moreover, it’s not a temper that seems to be directed at anything in particular, as the bruise blooming on his shin and the overturned baskets he’s currently stepping around would suggest.

She also seems to have no real _destination_ , Aziraphale realizes as he follows her around the same fork in the causeway for the third time.

Everything adds up to… well, nothing that makes any sense if Aziraphale is being perfectly honest. Children have always been something of a mystery to him.

_Crowley probably would have her figured out in a heartbeat. They’d be thick as thieves already, plotting their next ridiculous caper._

He smiles sadly at the thought as he trails the girl out of the market and into the farming district.

The sun is past its apex when she darts across a narrow bridge connecting the chinampas to the city and disappears into the small field of amaranth. Aziraphale frowns curiously and follows her into the floating garden, winding his way through the rows of feathery purple grain.

She’s easy enough to find. The garden is relatively small and walled in by water on all sides, made for function rather than a place to hide. She’s sitting cross-legged on the western bank, facing the lake and fiddling with the trinket from the market. Aziraphale makes a point to be noisy in his approach, kicking at the ground and rustling the plants so as not to catch her completely unawares.

As he makes his approach, she turns to look at him over her shoulder, shoots him an awful scowl, and throws the trinket into the lake. Then she turns her back to him again and slouches down over her knees.

“What on Earth did you do that for?” Aziraphale asks, genuinely bewildered. She doesn’t answer, but she doesn’t run away either, which he takes as a good sign. He takes a few tentative steps out of the amaranth towards her, stopping beside her but still a few paces away, hands clasped behind his back.

“You certainly went through a lot of trouble to get something you were just going to throw in the lake.”

“Go away.”

“Hm. Are you sure? Then you’ll be left with no company and no trinket and that does sound rather lonely.”

Her face pinches into an impressive frown as she turns to glare at him. “What do you _want_? Maquizcóatl is gone,” she huffs, dramatically gesturing at the lake with both hands. “There’s nothing here.”

Aziraphale’s mind trips over the word. He recognizes _cóatl_ to mean ‘snake,’ but the rest of it is lost on him.

He bites back the urge to snip at her with, _perhaps you should have thought of the before you threw your snake in the lake_ , and focuses on her question instead. “I suppose I just wanted to get away from the market. It’s quite _loud_ , wouldn’t you say?”

She squints up at him and wrinkles her nose.

Aziraphale shrugs and continues, “You seemed like you might know the secret spots in Tlatelolco. The amaranth is _very_ pretty,” he says, nodding to the swaying purple stalks around them. “A nice change from marigolds.”

Her frown deepens, but she remains silent, splitting her brooding stare between Aziraphale and the lake.

 _Heaven help me,_ how _does one talk to children?_

“Did you know you can eat them?” he tries.

“What?”

“Marigolds.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “Everyone knows that.”

He lets out a small tut of irritation before he can stop himself. “Not where I’m from they don’t. We don’t have amaranth either. Or chinampas at all for that matter.”

Her eyebrows lift very slightly as she peers up at him. This time, she doesn’t turn her attention back to the lake right away.

“Or snake gods,” Aziraphale says.

“No Quetzalcóatl?”

“No Quetzalcóatl.”

Confusion and curiosity spark in her eyes. “Where are you _from_?”

He smiles sadly. “Very far to the north. Someplace very white and cold.”

“What about Mictecacíhuatl? Do you have her?”

“No, we don’t know about her either.”

“ _How_?” she asks incredulously.

“It’s a very strange place,” he says. “Will you tell me about them? About Quetzalcóatl and Mictecacíhuatl?”

Her eyes go wide and she nods up at him. She bites her lip in thought for a moment, then takes a deep breath and says, “In the beginning—”

Aziraphale interrupts her with a laugh and holds up his hands. “Do you mind if I sit down for this?”

She looks down at the muddy bank beside her, then nods at him again. “Okay.”

Before Aziraphale can settle onto the ground next to her, she has started talking excitedly again. He takes a moment to appreciate the sun and the water and the vibrant amaranth, then tunes out the distant sounds of the city and gives her his full attention.

* * *

**1441, two months earlier, by Earth’s time**

If there is one thing Aziraphale is truly exceptional at, it’s paperwork.

He had been an adequate chronicler at best, his head always too wrapped up in the stories and the stars to be as objective as the job required. His reassignment to the role of principality had been arguably a worse fit, as shown by the five thousand years of waiting for the other shoe to drop regarding the whole business with the flaming sword. But for some reason, paperwork has always felt like a middle ground between these conflicting sides of him.

Where the chronicler had been a suit of armor, and the principality a sword, _paperwork_ is a shield— versatile, dynamic, offering an agility and grace not found in other tools. An offensive defense that utilizes tricky bits of semantics and takes advantage of loose ends, letting him jump through loopholes and stitch them back up behind himself.

Or at least, this is the story Aziraphale tells himself as he sits in the archives, revisiting every miracle—consequential or otherwise—he’s performed on Earth. He distracts himself by imagining he’s as an acrobat dancing and tumbling around a rain of arrows, or a knight swinging his shield around to catch attacks from every direction as he sorts through endless reports and files.

Sometimes, when the weight of the decades slipping by around him wears on his mind, he imagines himself a stone jutting out of a rushing river, strong and stalwart against the unrelenting onslaught of water.

Other times, he can’t help but feel like a pebble sunk to the bottom of the sea.

“541 AD,” Zophiel says, pulling a new stack of papers in front of them and letting their fingers glide down the first page, falling still on a line halfway down. “Constantinople.”

Aziraphale's stomach churns as he reaches for a memory of the sea, hoping for a stiff upper lip, but finds it dry. He pictures the shield instead, readying himself for an attack. _It was only a matter of time. You knew this one was coming. Focus._

“I believe you'll find I've already been reprimanded for that one. Surely there's no need for redundant—”

“Quite a _lot_ of miracles,” Zophiel continues as though they hadn’t heard him, their eyebrows lifting almost imperceptibly.

“Er—”

“Healing, mending, cleansing, creating food and water, sleep spells,” they turn the page and their eyes pinch into a small, confused expression. Aziraphale registers numbly that ninety five years ago, he would not have known how to read their features— he might not have even noticed it, but he’s learning the terrain. He feels as though his edges are being sanded down and he’s slowly being slotted back into this place. “Tell me more about this one.”

Aziraphale stares down at the line under their finger and feels the shield slip in his grip. ‘ _Voice augmented by Grace._ ’

It had been such a minor thing that he has trouble pulling up the memory at first. More second nature than any intentional miracle. He never would have expected it to find its way to the books and he certainly wouldn’t have expected it to _matter_ if it had. The idea of accidental miracles not only flowing out of him, but Heaven _tracking_ them sends a cold stab of fear through him.

“I comforted a dying child,” he says, his mind feeling suddenly too paralyzed to search for the loophole in the situation. “I made the sound of my voice into what she wanted to hear.”

“Why?”

Aziraphale blinks. “She was _dying_. What would you have me do?”

Zophiel hums softly and stares into him for a long moment. Then they drop their eyes to the page again, moving their fingers down a line. “And this one?”

He reads the line under Zophiel’s finger and feels everything within him sputter and freeze. ‘ _Environmental adjustment: temperature, humidity, charged particles. Application method: touch._ ’

One image creeps in over the sudden static in his mind. Dropping his burden. Crowley catching him. A wild garden springing up around them as the taste of grapes and a vision of vines climbing the trees carried a message of _hope_.

But… why _this_ instance of touch and not Rome? Or Eden?

Then the rest of the memory is pulled violently to the forefront of his mind. A child dying the same painful death she had just seen take her entire family. Pushing the tiniest miracle through his fingers and telling her stories as she drifted away…

He clears his throat around a lump forming there and wonders vaguely if it’s possible to cry in Heaven.

“I— The plague causes intense pain in humans. The weight of a sheet is almost more than they can bear, near the end. The girl—” he pauses and blinks a few times, tapping into the memory further. “Hortensia. That… was her name. Hortensia wanted someone to hold her hand and I didn’t want it to hurt her.”

Zophiel reads over the pages again, then studies Aziraphale, head tilted a fraction of a centimeter. “I see,” they hum, sounding almost curious.

The two of them return to the tired task of revisiting and cataloging Aziraphale’s communications from Constantinople, but he feels his mind start to wander away again. He finds himself thinking back over the exhaustive list of every miracle, accidental or otherwise, and is suddenly acutely aware that there had been no mention of reality bleeding into the vineyard or marigolds or a voice lighting the air with orange and amber and gold. That his connection to Crowley is not a miracle. That it’s something unknown, uncharted, unseen.

That they are, essentially, invisible.

It should be a relief, knowing that whether or not he gets out of this situation, Crowley will be safe from Heaven’s wrath. Somehow, it just feels like watching him disappear.

It feels like losing him.

* * *

** Tlatelolco - 1441  **

“But what happened to all the other Earths?” Aziraphale asks.

She frowns at him. “I already told you! The sky fell down, then storms, then fire, then water,” she says, counting off each apocalypse on her fingers.

“Yes, but where did they _go_? Did they just… float away?” he asks, letting his hands flit through the air like butterflies. “Is there anyone still _living_ on them?”

“What? No! Well— yes, us. It’s the same Earth, just different suns.”

“I see, my mistake,” Aziraphale laughs. “So this sun is the fifth one?”

She nods vigorously.

“And the world was made a little bit better every time?” he asks.

“Yes, the gods kept messing it up.”

“That was the fighting you talked about?”

“Mm-hmm. They kept breaking everything, but it’s okay because we got wind and rain and clouds with this sun.” She sticks her chin out in a satisfied motion and looks out across the lake. “And fishes,” she adds as an afterthought.

“Fishes,” Aziraphale echoes, genuinely perplexed.

“The last sun, remember? Water sun. Chalchiuhtlicue turned the bad people into fishes.”

“ _That’s_ where fishes come from?”

“Everyone knows that!”

“Not everyone, I assure you!” Aziraphale says, matching her excited volume. “But thank you for being so patient with me as I learn, my dear.”

They’ve been sitting on the edge of the chinampa, the lake in front of them and the swishing purple field at their back shielding them from the city, long enough that the sun has started to sink towards the mountains. Her energy and joy had bloomed as she’d told him her versions of her favorite stories. When she moves into tales about the feathered serpent and the goddess of the underworld, the wonder and delight that radiates out of her is strong enough that she feels like a completely different person than the typhoon he’d met in the market.

And while her chaotic brand of storytelling has been hard to follow, it has also been deeply enjoyable. Around their third conversational loop back to the ‘wind sun’, Aziraphale had realized that puzzling out the narrative from all her meandering and tangents and backtracking has made for one of the most entertaining stories he’s ever heard.

_A nice memory to close the book on indeed._

“You know,” he says, “you’ve told me the names of all the gods but I don’t think you ever told me _your_ name.”

“Yaretzi. What’s yours?”

“Azra.”

“What does _Azra_ mean?”

Aziraphale smiles thoughtfully. “I don’t think it means anything. _Should_ it mean something?”

“Everything means something,” she says sagely, possessing the kind of confidence only children can seem to achieve.

“What does _Yaretzi_ mean?”

She falls silent at that, turning away from him to look out over the lake, the first time in the past hour she hasn’t been a ball of energetic questions and answers.

“Hmm. Well, what do _you_ think Azra should mean?” he asks, not wanting to steer the conversation anywhere uncomfortable after establishing such a rapport. “I feel like you’re the expert here.”

She squints out at the water. “Umm. What’s your favorite food?”

“Oh goodness, I have quite a lot of favorites. But I think…” he trails off for a moment, staring out at the long stripe of orange light shimmering on the water. “I think grapes.”

“What’s grapes?”

Her innocent and unfiltered curiosity pulls him back from the edge of melancholy, wringing a laugh out of him. “It’s a fruit.”

“Oh. I don’t think your name should mean fruit. How about…” she scrunches up her face in thought again. “Question-asker? You ask a lot of questions.”

“Do I?”

“A lot more than most grown ups.”

“Azra Question-asker Fell,” he says under his breath, trying out the name. It sounds silly and whimsical, but somehow that endears it to him more. And even though it’s not necessarily an accurate descriptor of _the principality Aziraphale_ , he thinks it could potentially be a closely held value of _Azra Fell’s_. The version of himself he’s leaving behind after today. “Yes, I think that will do nicely.”

“It’s a lot better than _Azra Grapes_ ,” Yaretzi says.

“You’ve got me there,” he chuckles. “What about Maquizcóatl? What does that mean?”

“Bad luck,” she says quietly, after a few beats of silence.

“A bad luck snake?”

She nods.

“I hope you’ll forgive another line of foolish questioning, but why would you go to so much trouble to get _bad_ luck?”

She frowns at him. “To make friends with it,” she says, as though stating the most obvious thing in the world. “If you’re friends with bad luck, then it won’t bother you. It’ll be _good_ luck.”

Aziraphale stares at her, momentarily taken aback by the line of reasoning that manages to be so innocent, imaginative, and simple all at once.

“Where I come from,” he says, letting her whimsy carry him away, “we have something similar. They’re called _dragons_.”

“They’re bad luck?”

“That depends on who you ask. Sometimes knights try to fight them and steal their treasure. I think dragons are certainly bad luck for _them_. It seems to me that if we had more people like you who wanted to make friends with dragons, they might be far less scary.”

“Yeah! Everyone should make friends with dragons!”

“I agree completely,” he says. Then, with a sly smile, he adds, “Do you want to see a magic trick?”

“Yes!”

“Nothing in my hands, correct?” he says, lifting his hands up in front of himself, splaying his fingers wide. With a dramatic flair, he reaches one hand towards Yaretzi, positioning it to the side of her head and just out of her line of sight. Figuring the consequences of frivolous miracles are moot at this point, he snaps his fingers and summons her trinket from the lake, pulling it into view with an exaggerated look of astonishment.

Seeing it up close for the first time, he realizes his comparison to a dragon hadn’t been far off. He holds a carved serpent, it’s coiling body painted green and red, made symmetrical by the head carved at each end. The eyes are tiny flecks of amber that glitter back at him in the fading sun.

Yaretzi gasps and grabs it from his hands. The trinket is small—not much larger than Aziraphale’s palm, though it manages to look much larger in her hands.

“How did you do that?” she demands.

“I told you. Magic.”

She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, then says in a low, conspiratorial voice, “Are you a dragon?”

“I’m afraid not, my dear,” he laughs. “Just a friend to one.”

* * *

** 1441, by Earth’s time **

Zophiel’s eyes are an extraordinary shade of hazel. A cool grey-green around the outside of the iris, warm mahogany around the pupils, the two colors winding together and fading into each other somewhere in the middle. The quality of light in Heaven never changes, but somehow their eyes manage to catch and reflect it back in beautiful new ways, glinting like amber when they look down at a page, flashing like sea glass when they flick them up to stare into Aziraphale. The color reminds him of forests, seas, the dusky tint of the sky just before the sunset flares into fiery hues.

He wonders how he didn’t notice sooner.

"Welcome back," they say serenely, glancing up at him as he settles back into his seat in the archives. “I’d like to revisit Constantinople before moving on.”

Aziraphale’s eyebrows shoot up. “Is there a problem?”

“No, not exactly,” Zophiel says, maintaining their intense brand of eye contact. _Eyes like pine trees in winter, like storm clouds, like nebulae_. Aziraphale wants to cling to the color of them, the one vibrant thing in the archives. “You said the child’s name was Hortensia.”

“I— Yes, that’s correct.”

“You also described her pain. The effects of the plague.”

“Well. Only what I observed. I imagine it’s hard to describe _well_ without experiencing it firsthand.”

“There’s no record of this in the archives. Besides the saints, there are no records of any of their names or experiences.”

“ _Should_ there be?” he asks. “I didn’t think Heaven was interested in it.”

“It’s information, Aziraphale. Information the records are lacking. I’d like you to help me fill in the gaps.”

_Stories? Zophiel wants stories?_

Aziraphale stares for a moment, lost in the swirl of color in their eyes. _Aloe leaves, river rocks, meadows shrouded in fog._

“Yes, alright,” he says with a nod.

* * *

**Tlatelolco - 1441**

“ _You are loved_ ,” Yaretzi says suddenly.

They had been sitting in silence for several minutes, Aziraphale watching the sun’s light fade from the sky one last time, her playing with her Maquizcóatl. The city sounds behind them have been growing gradually louder as it’s gotten darker, the temple districts preparing for the second night of the Feast of the Dead.

“Sorry, what?”

“That’s what Yaretzi means. Mama chose it.”

“Yaretzi, that’s very beautiful,” he says, pulling his attention down from the sky to look at her. She keeps her eyes on the toy in her lap. “Every time someone says your name, you know that you are loved. There’s no greater treasure than that.”

“Yeah,” she sighs, then looks up at the sky. “I should find Papa.”

“I should be leaving as well. Do you mind if I walk with you?”

“Okay.”

He climbs to his feet as she bounces up and into the amaranth, as light and sporadic as a dragonfly. There’s a weightlessness about her movement that isn’t reflected in her mood; the wonder and delight that he had felt radiating off of her while she told him stories has faded to the faintest background noise. _She's so quiet,_ he thinks, watching her disappear into the grain. _Almost silent._

The silence fills quickly, however, as he makes his way through the garden that’s been separating them from the city. The Feast of the Dead is a joyous affair, and tens of thousands of people across the city are toasting and remembering passed loved ones tonight, filling the air with more love and contentment than Aziraphale has felt in centuries.

He hadn’t realized what a bubble of calm they had settled into until the din of Tlatelolco begins to rush over him again. The sounds of civilization had been present, but hidden under the rustle of amaranth in the wind and the lap of lakewater, as he and Yaretzi had passed questions and answers and stories between each other like covert operatives. It had been peaceful and pure, an innocent curiosity tinged with whimsy, a fast bond of understanding and trust forming between them. The kind of instant connection that humans seem to leave in childhood.

He heaves a sigh as the cacophony of Tlatelolco seeps back into him, remembering that he’ll be back upstairs before the sun rises.

Hoping to hold onto the feeling in the amaranth for a little longer, he focuses on following Yaretzi through the crowd. It’s an easy enough task— she seems to know where she’s going and stays a few steps ahead of him, turning back often to make sure he’s following before darting across a canal or down a new causeway.

Her meandering path takes them back toward the market district, the crowds growing denser and livelier as they go. Rich copal incense drifts out of the windows of most houses, mingling with the faint smell of fruit and the richer aroma of chocolate. People greet one another warmly, laughing and embracing as they drape garlands of marigolds around each other’s shoulders.

The feeling of trying to move while in the depths of a dream starts to bloom in Aziraphale’s center as he follows Yaretzi across the causeway leading to the temple district. The marigolds, the heavy cloud of love and comfort, the sights and smells and sounds, all work together to pull him into a contented haze. He keeps his eyes trained on Yaretzi, trusting her to lead him through it.

 _It’s rather like she’s towing me across a sea,_ he thinks giddily, letting the heady rush of merriment carry him away. _Like we’re adventurers on an epic quest to befriend a dragon, but first we must travel over land and sea, beyond the mountains and above the clouds. Through jungles and deserts, cities and forests, rushing rivers and frozen tundras._

 _Through a field of marigolds._ He blinks.

There is a moment then— a moment which stops to hover as it darts by, as quick and delicate and strong as a hummingbird.

A moment that ensnares him, wraps itself around his heart, and makes him freeze in the middle of the temple square.

It’s a blur of color, a gentle thrum like wings, the memory of an intoxicating spice on his tongue. He follows the siren song of it, reaching for the place within him where a gossamer thread is anchored, and for an instant, a gasp, a flash— Aziraphale remembers.

_A petal, passed between us like communion._

_“Just a petal. Its roots are fine.”_

_“But how can you know that?”_

_You were an artist with eyes like molten gold, entire galaxies in their depths. An easy, crooked smile and a laugh like the chime of a bell, like music._

_The earth under our feet, you at my side, flowers in my mouth— grounding and all-encompassing._

_“Taste is wild, right?”_

_I knew you. In a field of marigolds, I knew you. You were Joriel, and I knew you, and I loved you. In that moment and so many moments after, I loved you in ways that I didn’t have words for because those words didn’t exist yet. You, me, the earth. The three of us, woven together. The three of us, unwound and separated._

_“You’d never know it from down here, but Sol has a sound_. _Constantly singing, Earth's star.”_

_Joriel. I loved you so much._

_Crowley. I never stopped._

Then the moment passes.

Yaretzi says his name, grabs his arm and gives it a tug— and he feels something slip away like water through cupped palms, leaving behind an unsettling film of déjà vu. He frowns and shakes it off, then smiles down at her.

“I found Papa,” she says, pointing across Mictecacíhuatl’s square to where a priest is lighting incense and candles on an altar covered in marigolds. “I have to go now. We’re… remembering Mama tonight.”

Aziraphale gazes down at her from his haze of marigolds and incense, feeling the noise and emotion of the crowd as a steady hum in his center. He gives her a sad smile as the last piece of understanding slides into place.

“I need to go back to my family too,” he says. “But thank you for the stories, Yaretzi.”

She grins and nods. Then, as quickly as she had stormed into his life, she skips out of it.

* * *

** 1484, by Earth’s time **

“1441 AD. Tlatelolco. Summoning?” Zophiel says with an almost-imperceptible quirk of an eyebrow. “Another interaction with a human, I presume?”

Aziraphale nods. “A child named Yaretzi. She had lost a trinket in a lake. I retrieved it for her.”

“And why was this a relevant course of action?”

It had been strange at first, adding this new line of questioning to his audit. Examining every report and mistake and instance of frivolity from this new angle had slowed the process down considerably, and Zophiel had been meticulous in leaving no stone unturned. They had insisted on going back and revisiting some of Aziraphale’s reports from earlier in the audit as well, adding new names, information, and stories to fill in the gaps in the books.

But while the process had been slow, and the deep dive into the mistakes and flaws of Aziraphale and humanity alike had been quite uncomfortable at times, it had also been _interesting_.

“Well, it was partially my fault the thing ended up in the lake in the first place,” he says. “I startled her and she, er— dropped it.”

“Was a _miracle_ really necessary though?”

“It seemed the least I could do. She spent a great deal of time telling me the creation myths of her religion and I suppose I wanted to thank her.”

Zophiel’s eyebrow twitches again. “Creation myths?”

He allows himself a small smile as he tells them about Quetzalcóatl and the sun cycles and the earth’s rebirths. Their hand glides across the page as he speaks, writing down all the twists and turns to the story. By the time Aziraphale is done, the page and its margins have been filled with their neat script.

Watching the shape of the archives gradually change in this way, as records of Earth slowly become _stories_ instead of just facts, has had an unexpected effect on him. It still doesn’t feel like the home it once did, but this small shift in Zophiel’s outlook feels like adding a splash of color into the achromatic space. It makes it bearable.

“Hmm. I think this one might need its own entry,” they say. “It’s a bit too complex for footnotes.”

“If you think that’s complex, you should hear the Norse creation myth,” Aziraphale says with a small puff of laughter. “The part with the _cow_ is especially interesting.”

“Are there many more like this?”

“Oh, yes. Thousands. Humans are very creative.”

They look up at him, eyes glinting sea-green with the movement, and hum thoughtfully again. “This final miracle concludes your audit here, but it also raises the question of what to do next.”

“Ah. Right,” he says, suddenly feeling very tired. “I’m sure Gabriel has something in mind to keep me busy for another few centuries at least.”

“Gabriel is not the only Archangel with a say in these matters,” they say soberly. “And he also has no sway over the archives.”

Aziraphale suppresses a sigh. He had wondered if the demotion to chronicler was in his future. As much as he’d tried to prepare himself for it emotionally, the thought of the rest of his days being spent in the archives still has a bitter taste to it.

“I suppose one doesn’t forget how to be a chronicler.” _I fit here once. I can do it again, if I must._

“I don’t think you should return to being a chronicler. Not… officially. You bridge the gap between principality and chronicler in a unique way that makes you well-suited for being Heaven’s representative on Earth. Your familiarity with humans makes you the obvious choice.”

Aziraphale stares, waiting for the other shoe to fall.

“But we would be adding to your duties. Having you send me reports such as these,” they say, with a slight nod to the form on the desk, “in addition to your normal correspondances with Gabriel. Updates on how humanity develops culturally in an attempt to keep the archives informed.”

For the second time in his existence, Aziraphale fights the urge to burst into deranged giggles in the archives.

“I— Yes, I think I’d be open to that,” he manages.

“It wasn’t a request, Aziraphale,” Zophiel says, lowering their eyes back to their desk, the light catching the grey in them and flashing in a way that makes him think of rainstorms. There’s the smallest tug at the edge of their mouth, the slightest crinkle at the corner of their eyes, the ghost of a smile that, a century ago, he would never have noticed. “But I’m glad.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [that I had met you when your heart was safe to hold](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4vkL7YJW9So)


	14. Pockets full of stones

** Brandarius - 1365 **

The light in the Brandaris has not gone out for fifteen years. Its brilliant blaze calms to a glimmer during the day, but flares up to burn through every night and storm, resolute and bright. _Too_ bright, if the gossip is to be believed. Whispers have a way of twisting their way through the island and among sailors, but as gossip goes, a lighthouse being too effective falls more in the realm of curiosities than worries.

There is a small village populated by fishermen, anchorites, and not much in between tucked down the hill and around the dunes from the lighthouse. Brandarius is not a bustling town—far from it, especially in the wake of such a plague—but life has carried on. Sea traffic, though less frequent now, passes between the islands at a slowly increasing clip as merchant sailors make their way to and from Amsterdam.

The residents of Brandarius have noticed the strangeness surrounding their lighthouse, of course. It would take a very thick wool over the eyes indeed to be blind to the unnaturally bright fire that, for all intents and purposes, seems unquenchable. It would be willful ignorance to ignore the presence of the lighthouse keeper.

Or rather, the keeper’s _lack_ of presence. He can often be spotted standing motionless on the light deck at night, the great flame of the Brandaris at his back as he leans on the railing and stares out at the sea. Some of the villagers will talk of spotting him wandering the dunes or seeing to menial tasks on the grounds around the tower, but these claims are rarely backed up with a second witness. The old barkeep in the town’s one pub will tell anyone who will listen about greeting the mysterious keeper of the light when he first arrived on Terschelling’s shores, but these tales have fallen into the realm of local legend. The few children on the island will sometimes dare each other to sneak up the hill and peer in through the lower windows, but this rarely yields more than working themselves into a fright.

The only resident of Brandarius who has any contact with the lighthouse keeper is the boy who acts as a messenger between the docks and the tower. A fisherman’s son infected with a bout of wanderlust, more driven by curiosity than anything else, counting the days until he can sail away from this tiny corner of the world. Once a fortnight, he makes his way up the hill, sometimes carrying a small bundle of supplies, other times dragging a cart behind him. There is a sturdy wooden box outside the tower that the keeper will leave a few coins in, along with a list of items for the next delivery. Most visits from the lad involve simply pocketing the coins and the list, depositing the delivery in the box, then scampering back to town.

There are, however, exceptions.

Today, he pulls a cart of mundane supplies (firewood, paint, nails, a trowel), but as he reaches the tower, he removes a folded square of parchment from his pocket. Clutching it in his hand, he takes a steadying breath and knocks on the door.

He doesn’t have to wait long before the door eases open. The lighthouse keeper stands in the threshold, the sleeves of his dark workshirt bunched at the elbows, wiping his hands on a rag. He peers at the boy through his strange dark glasses, draping the rag idly over his shoulder.

“Hello, Hector,” he says. “What’s the problem, then?”

“Erm— no problem, sir. Just—” he holds up the letter— a battered and weathered thing, but professionally folded and sealed. Hector’s face pinches into a curious frown. “It’s, erm— it’s addressed to… Anthony?”

“ _Is_ it, now?” Crowley raises an eyebrow and extends a hand to the boy. “That’s certainly not a name I hear often.”

“So, is it— Are you—” Hector continues to stammer out half-questions as he hands the letter over. Crowley turns it over in his hands as he waits for the boy to find his composure. The extent of the address is scrawled above the seal as: _Anthony, The Brandaris, Terschelling_ , written in neat and flowing handwriting. “Is that _your_ name? Anthony?” Hector eventually manages.

Crowley grunts and lets his other eyebrow climb his forehead. “That it is. Ah, you were able to find a trowel. Excellent,” he says, peering past Hector at the cart. “Good work. Would you mind leaving it all in the box for now?”

Hector nods, wide-eyed and awestruck at the new revelation.

“And Hector? Let’s keep this to ourselves, alright? Our little secret,” Crowley says, tapping the side of his nose conspiratorially. He catches a glimpse of Hector beaming proudly as he shuts the door, and takes it as confirmation enough that his secret is safe.

Back inside the cool, quiet dark of the lighthouse, Crowley turns his full attention to the letter in his hands. “How in Satan’s name did she pull this one off…” he mutters to himself as he climbs the stairs past the modest living quarters, making his way to the compact kitchen on the fifth floor. There are still several hours until sunset and he finished his repairs to the windows earlier in the day, so he sinks into the chair at the small table, snaps his fingers to light the oil lamp sitting there, and breaks the wax seal.

The next wave of surprise comes from the letter being written in Latin.

_Anthony,_

_The flow of people through this world is truly one of its greatest puzzles. In fifteen years, not a day has passed that I haven’t thought of you in some capacity, but never once did I seek you out. You can imagine my surprise, then, when a sailor, home from his journeys in the north, passed through my bakery running his mouth about ‘The Ghost of the Brandaris.’ A spectre of a man, if the seafarer’s story is to be believed, dark-spectacled with a shock of red hair as the only color on his ghostly frame. A man who never leaves the lighthouse, but can sometimes be seen atop the tower, silhouetted against the beacon. The story goes that he never ventures into town, never has food delivered to the lighthouse, and never lets the light burn out, even in the heaviest rains. This young sailor was really quite swept away with the tragic spectacle of it all._

_I kicked him and his nonsense out of my shop as soon as he paid for his pierniki, naturally._

Crowley pauses long enough to snort at the parchment, imagining the irritated scoff that must have accompanied this scene. A smile is tugging at the corner of his mouth for the first time in a decade when he resumes reading.

_If you were hoping to go unnoticed on your perch in the Netherlands, you severely miscalculated. News travels fast, but stories travel far, and there is no better vessel for either than sailors. Surely you have imagined the stories that must have flowed through those islands. Sailors and travellers and fishermen love nothing more than finding someone to listen to them, and you have given them much to talk about._

_This is all to say that I am glad you’ve found a place you fit in well enough to linger, for I doubt very much you would suffer tedium. I hope you are well and that you have found some peace._

_Salutaria,_

_Adrielle_

Underneath her signature, there is a postscript at the bottom of the page with the name of a bakery in the town of Toruń, and beneath that, in parentheses: _(If you like)_. He shakes his head and huffs out a small scoff into the sparse room.

The letter feels like a masterful play. Just enough information to grab his attention, small reminders of friendship peppered throughout to _hold_ said attention, but ending before telling him anything important whatsoever. And then a return address as an afterthought? It feels like the first move in a game of chess, from an opponent who has absolute confidence he won’t refuse. It’s aggravating. It’s delightful. _Toruń? A bakery? Did she_ ever _mention being a baker? What of Francesca? And how the heaven does she have the means to send letters in Latin?_

He stews on it for the rest of the day. He’s still stewing when the sun begins to set and he makes his way to the light deck to prod the hellfire beacon to life. Staring into the dark void of the North Sea is normally a meditative act, providing enough of a distraction to quiet the other corners of his mind, but it only seems to add to his irritation tonight. The night is less than half gone before he’s muttering to himself and drafting a return letter in his head.

At first light, he stalks back down the stairs, returns to the small table, and begins plotting out his first move across their chessboard.

* * *

** The Brandaris - 1378 **

The note is waiting for him on the table when he passes through the kitchen on his way to the beacon. A dirty, singed memo, enveloped in a faint sulfur-scented cloud. Crowley had wondered when he’d hear from downstairs, but had also hoped they would be tied up with the aftermath of the plague for much longer. He stalks over to the note with a scowl, bracing himself for whatever it might hold.

_Demon Crowley. I see you’ve taken up a station in a lighthouse. Report._

Beelzebub’s sigil is scrawled under the curt message.

 _Very concise, I’ll give them that. Could have been worse._ He’s had years to prepare for this and scribbles a quick response about using the hellfire beacon as a means to lure ships to their doom, thus further bruising human morale in the wake of such a widespread tragedy. He cites a few shipwrecks near the island, knowing no one will bother to follow up on their cause, adds his sigil to the bottom, and sends it back downstairs with a dismissive snap of his fingers.

It’s all lies, of course. He’s taken the role of lighthouse keeper as seriously as any job, and ironically, has found himself quite suited for it. But writing it down still leaves a sour taste in his mouth. He doesn’t wait for a reply, continuing his path up to the light deck where he prods the flame to life as the sun sets behind the thick cover of clouds.

As if by some small mercy, it’s been a cloudy week with no signs of letting up any time soon. He still knows Icarus is soaring by, however many millions of kilometers away. Over the years he’s found that he can _feel_ the damned thing, like a prickle at the back of his neck, but not having to _see_ it helps. Especially when he has to face it alone.

A pang of some multi-faceted emotion shoots through him as he thinks of Athens and Ostia and Bithynia. It’s something adjacent to sadness. Something that holds layers of longing and belonging and nostalgia. A wistful and withdrawn sort of love.

 _Homesickness_ , he realizes dully. The home he had never quite achieved in Heaven, had never wanted in Hell, had never felt like he could fully have on Earth— but against all odds, felt so naturally when he was with Aziraphale. And missed so desperately when they were apart. It’s always been a moving target of a sensation, the inexplicable feeling of home. A color or a smell or a light that, at some undefinable moment, had come to rest within him, as slow and bright as a sunrise.

 _Of course you’d build your home in an angel_. _Tie your fool heart to the hereditary enemy. Never could let things just be easy._

He sighs and lifts his eyes to the inky darkness above him. “Hi, Icarus,” he mutters, feeling like he’s talking to the more tangible presence of the sea than the cloud-veiled comet. “Look, we both know that if he’s on Earth right now, he’s probably got his eye on you. And he’s always been a fan of yours, so maybe put on a good show, alright? Don’t let him—” _forget about me. Please, don’t let him forget about me._ “Just… don’t disappoint him.”

The night stretches on, cold and starless, and Crowley watches over it, pulling the role of the Ghost of the Brandaris around him like a disguise. Like armor.

When the first hints of light creep back into the world, he wills the beacon to remain bright and steadfast, descends the stairs to the neglected living quarters, and crawls into bed. He sleeps for a week.

* * *

** A splash of color in the dunes - 1391 **

There is a small patch of forest a few kilometers north of the lighthouse that Crowley wanders through when he needs to get away from the tight confines of the tower. A decade after arriving on the island, through his meandering, he had found himself at a small freshwater lake nestled between the dunes and the trees. It hadn’t been the lake that had taken him by surprise, but rather the plant life around it. Cranberry bushes and hearty succulents grow in tangled patches near the bank, wild orchids in the richer soil by the trees, and patches of lavender stretch across the space between.

The whole picture is a startling juxtaposition to the rest of Terschelling. Besides sunrise and sunset, color is something of a rarity on the small sandy island, and he had taken to the patch of bright plants immediately. He returns often and takes in the sight as though it were as vital as food or sleep.

Today, he is at the lake in the dunes with a trowel, chipping away at the slow task of separating sprigs of lavender and transplanting it farther, persuading the plant to expand its range. It’s a task he’s been at for years, and slowly the space has stretched out and started to resemble a chaotic kind of garden.

When the afternoon sun begins its descent, Crowley begins the hike back to the lighthouse. The usual delivery has been deposited in the supply box in his absence, but he opens it to find a letter set atop the usual assortment of mundane items. his heart gives an excited jump at the sight, but settles into confusion when he sees _Anthony, The Brandaris, Terschelling_ addressed in a messy and unfamiliar hand. Ignoring the rest of the supplies, he plucks the letter from the box and climbs the stairs to the kitchen, breaking the seal as he walks. His eyes flit to the bottom of the page first, confirming the name at the bottom is Adrielle’s, before settling into the chair and beginning to read.

_Anthony,_

_I’ll be leaving Toruń soon, and it seemed somehow unfair to do so without letting you know. It’s been a curious thing, putting down roots for as long as I have. None of the melodramatic stagnation that I once assumed, and there’s been tremendous joy to be found in a life of stillness and calm, but I still feel the need to move on. I fear if I don’t do it now, I will lose my final opportunity to travel._

_My mind has been wandering to Florence lately. I never did get the chance to see Florence. The damn world went and ended before I made it there, and I ended up in the last place I expected._

_The bakery is in capable hands, so I think I will make my way south soon, assuming the world doesn’t end and ruin my plans again. First, however, I intend to feed this wanderlust and head west. If you would be so kind as to continue haunting that lighthouse of yours for a while longer, then I will see you soon._

_Your friend,_

_Adrielle_

Crowley reads over the letter a few more times before refolding it neatly and leaning back in his chair with a sigh. As usual after a letter from Adrielle, he has questions. A few trivial curiosities about the bakery and her off-hand statements about Florence run through his head, as well as some concerns about trekking across the continent at her age, but all of them are overshadowed by the _handwriting_. The implication that either this letter is written in a hand other than her own, or every single other letter had been. He’d always wondered if she had employed the use of a scribe—it would explain the Latin and the professional seals—and judging but the sloppy handwriting and carelessly blotted ink on this one, it had most certainly _not_ been written by a skilled scribe. Why stop now? Was writing this final letter herself proving some kind of point?

 _Her final letter,_ he realizes with faint amusement. She’s won their game. Backed him into a corner before making her final move, ensuring he can’t return the play, and then simply _stated_ that she would be visiting. It’s clever. Deft and sure-footed and entirely infuriating.

He shakes his head as he pushes the chair back, rising and moving to open a drawer beside the stove. There is a small metal lockbox there that he pulls out and carries back to the table, pulling out a small stack of letters— seventeen in all, once he adds this latest one. The box of letters is the only piece of sentimentality in the whole lighthouse, though Crowley has taken pains to convince himself they’re simply _the game_. There’s nothing _emotional_ about it if he looks at the letters as simple missives passed between himself and Adrielle over the years, like scouts sending coded messages across enemy lines. Simply one strategic move leading to the next as they spar their way across a chessboard.

Adding this final letter, however, makes it feel like completing a story or putting the final flourish on a painting. In turn, it is suddenly far more difficult to emotionally detach himself from the whole matter.

He flips through her letters idly, starting at the beginning with her cryptic mentions of the bakery and teasing about the Ghost of the Brandaris. From there, the bird’s eye view of her life had come into focus slowly from scraps included in between the lines. The leads about the farm and Poland being relatively untouched by plague had been good ones. From passing mentions about farm work and Francesca’s family, he’d pieced together that the two of them had made it to Poland safely. She had spent a few years as a farmhand before following a friend to Toruń and finding work as a baker’s apprentice. Her fifth letter had revealed a streak of unexpected good fortune in which she inherited the bakery from her mentor.

In her sixth letter, she had started including drawings. Sketches of plants and trees mostly, supposedly from her garden. Not _good_ drawings at first—the first had been a shaky rendering of an oak tree with some acorns sketched in the margins—but she’d kept at it. Her seventh letter was two years later and had included drawings of daffodils, done with enough skill that, if he hadn’t known better, he might have guessed it was a different artist. The pictures she’d sent over the years had experimented with inks and eventually paints, each one notably better than the one before it, until the sixteenth letter had come with an amazingly detailed painting of a fern.

Crowley gathers the letters back up, putting the story in its proper order, and replaces them in the box. He doesn’t return them to the drawer, however, opting to leave them on the table, in the open.

 _I suppose I’ll see her when I see her_. Resigned to the notion, he climbs the stairs to take up his nightly watch.

* * *

** A light above the North Sea - 1394 **

The biggest surprise about his friendship with Adrielle is not that she keeps finding ways to surprise him. Rather, it’s the fact that he keeps letting his guard down enough to be surprised.

The latest surprise comes while he’s repairing the ruts in the path leading to the lighthouse. With a start, he realizes that she’s on the island. It feels like a tonal shift to the world, the key of a song changing— the melody carries on like normal, just with a slightly different shape to the underlying chord.

_That’s new. Or did I just never notice?_

He finishes work on the hole in the path, bundles up his tools, and heads up the hill to wait for her.

The afternoon sun is high in the sky when the knock comes. Crowley, unsure of what else to do to fill the time, has been sitting on the stairs on the ground floor of the tower. He takes a steadying breath, stands, and opens the door.

They stare at each other for a long, still moment, in which Crowley realizes he has never been more desperately aware of the measure of forty five years. She looks good for her age, easily not a day older than fifty, but she still looks old. Worldly. _Travelled_. Her hair, now streaked with a few distinguished tendrils of white, has grown long again, half of it tied back in a braided knot. The lines etched around her eyes and mouth are made even more apparent with the flow of her hair pulled away from the edges of her face.

The familiarity is instant, however. Up close, the tonal shift he had felt simply feels like Adrielle. The person he had known decades before, the staunch friendship they had forged over the course of four months. She has a confident sort of poise about her that doesn’t feel _new_ , so much as it feels like an extension of what she had been. With a start, Crowley realizes he can still sense all the same grief and sorrow that he had once grown so accustomed to, but instead of a terrible weight on her back, she carries it now like a badge. Like a map of where she’s been.

Adrielle raises her eyebrows questioningly at him. “Your hair is longer,” she says.

Crowley had been braced for shocked exclamations, ready for questions about his ageless exterior. He almost laughs at how casual she is, stifling a small snort before it can fully escape him. “Yours too,” he says, pulling the door open and letting her enter.

“You know,” she says irritably as she follows him inside, “your ability to be the easiest person in Europe to find, but the hardest to reach, is truly astonishing.”

“You don’t think that maybe that’s the _point_ of taking up a post like this?” he responds, letting the scoff out this time as he leads the way up the stairs. He waves a hand vaguely across the kitchen, quickly manifesting a second chair at the table before she enters the room. _Shit. No food though. No… anything to offer a guest._

“You want to be found, then?”

“I’m going to be _found_ either way. I want to be hard to reach.”

She hums idly, almost dismissively, and drops her pack by the door before walking a slow circle around the sparse room, coming to rest in front of the small north-facing window. “Why?” she asks casually, staring out at the sea.

Adrielle always did have a way of cutting straight to the heart of things. It’s a simple question, and one he’s been asking himself for decades, but the answer is anything but simple. _Why_ is he on this island? The plague has passed and humanity is slowly starting to rebuild. His skills are wasted on lighthouse keeping— a job any human with a penchant for solitude and two brain cells to rub together could do. It would be so _easy_ to pick a new city, any city at all, he could throw a dart at a map and almost certainly end up somewhere decent enough to pick up his old life.

_Most of it, anyway._

The circular line of questioning always comes back to one thing— Aziraphale at the start and end of everything. Having no idea where he is, if he’s even on the planet, if he ever will be again. He thinks of the argument. The cold briny fear about being recalled, the _uncertainty_. He feels the edges of an ache that may just be missing, but also feels very much like panoramic loss, and wants to pull back from it as fiercely as if he had just placed his hand on a hot stove.

 _Why?_ She had asked it as though it were the easiest question in the world, and something about hearing it out loud—unexpected and from a friend—forces him to stare, unblinking, into the center of the answer.

 _Because_ here _is the only place on the planet I feel like I’m with him. The salt, the sea, the light in the darkness. The side of him that is strong enough to face famines and wars and plagues and so much death. The part of him that can take in all the loss without crumbling._

He stares at the back of her head, the inane thought of ‘ _when did she start braiding her hair?’_ keeping him from sinking all the way into melancholy. “Killing time, I guess,” he says weakly. “Waiting for the world to right itself again.”

She scoffs and the sound fills Crowley’s heart with enough affection to pull him all the way out of his plaintive daydream. “Yes, the _time_ thing,” she says, turning over her shoulder and fixing a hawk-like stare on him. “Are you going to explain—” she pauses to make a sweeping gesture in his direction, “or are you going to make me ask?”

He manages a feeble grin. “Not sure what you mean, Adrielle.”

She scoffs again and rolls her eyes dramatically and Crowley feels his heart nearly break from how much he’s missed annoying her. “Alright, fine, we’ll play it your way,” she grumbles, shucking her travelling cloak and hanging it on a peg by the stairs. When she turns back to him, she lets her hands fly to her mouth and gives an exaggerated gasp. “Why, Anthony, you haven’t aged a day!” she cries in mock surprise.

“Ah right, _that_ time thing.” He gestures to one of the chairs. “Get you anything?”

“Yes, boil some water,” she says, seamlessly dropping the act and stooping to rummage through her pack. “Two cups, too”

While her back is turned to him, Crowley opens the cupboard where he can hide his hands as he miracles her request into existence, then carries the cups and steaming kettle to the table. When Adrielle finishes rummaging, she joins him at the table, carrying a small package wrapped in linen and tied with string, but stops to frown at the spread. Her eyes dart between the kettle and Crowley a few times as she sinks slowly into her chair.

_Ah. Oops._

“I’ve had some guesses over the years,” she says, carefully unwrapping the package to reveal a bundle of dried tea leaves. With a patient and practiced hand, she lines the bottom of each cup with a pinch of tea, reties the package, and fills the cups with hot water. “Each guess is more absurd than the last, but you know how imaginations are,” she continues, pulling one of the cups toward her and leaning into the curling cirrus of steam. “A sorcerer?”

Crowley snorts. “Wha— A _sorcerer_?”

“That was my first guess, not long after we met, in fact. After your trick with the horses. I’d actually ruled that one out until just now, but—” she points at the kettle. “Not a sorcerer then?”

He blinks. _I don’t know how I expected her to react, but definitely not like this._ “No, Adrielle. I’m not a sorcerer.”

“Hmm. A fairy?”

He actually laughs at that.

“It would explain the ageless thing. And the horses,” she says calmly. “Maybe the bit about ‘painting sound’ too.”

“If fairies were _real_.”

She just shrugs. “If I’ve learned anything from this life, it’s that you should always be ready to change your mind.” She narrows her eyes mischieviously at him. “A shapeshifter then? Perhaps a naga?”

“How do you even know what a naga _is_?” he asks, deflecting from how eerily close she is with that one.

“How do _you_?” she asks, the crow’s feet around her eyes deepening as she squints at him with a gleeful sort of suspicion. “Seems to me only a naga would try to distract from the question like that.” She props her elbows on the table, lifting her cup to her nose to breathe in the steam, a smile twinkling in her eyes. “You should at least smell the tea. I think you’ll like it.”

“What would you do if I were _actually_ a fairy? I feel like you haven’t thought this through,” he grumbles, pulling his cup towards him.

“I would delight in being a human worthy of befriending a fairy, because they seem like _exactly_ the sort you shouldn’t make enemies of,” she replies easily, blowing on her tea. “And I’ve had forty five years to think it through.”

He’s halfway through a thought about how he’s a master at finding the _weirdest_ humans to befriend, when the smell of the tea hits him. A delicate, earthy smell, backed by a quiet suggestion of jasmine. He falls deathly still as he stares into the pale golden liquid, remembering to breathe, but only for want of the fragrant steam in his lungs. All thoughts leave his mind except Aziraphale’s smile. He closes his eyes and focuses on the smell and how it mixes with the sea salt that’s permeated the interior of the lighthouse, imagining the bright periwinkle light of the laugh that would accompany it; a soft and delicate color that’s always made him think of a winter dawn, of the promise of spring.

Adrielle’s voice breaks the silence after a few moments, gentle and kind. “Nicer times?”

“Yeah,” Crowley breathes. “Yeah, you could say that.”

“Somehow, it is for me too,” she says serenely. “One would think I’d connect it with sickness and death. All the loss. Such _despair_. But somehow… it’s always just made me think of hope.”

“A light in the darkness?” he says with a small, crooked smile.

“Yes, good job, very _poetic_ ,” she scoffs sarcastically.

The smile spreads to the other half of his face. “Right clever, putting jasmine in tea.”

“I grew it, actually. The tea too.”

“In _Poland_?” he asks incredulously, opening his eyes.

“Yes, the merchant I bought the cuttings from seemed skeptical too. I don’t know why, it took to the garden wonderfully.”

“Ah. There might, um… be a reason actually.” _No point in avoiding it. She’s got it half figured out already and seems pretty open to the fantastical._

She arches an eyebrow.

“You’ve probably noticed that you’ve aged very _gracefully_? And you probably never get sick anymore? Living things in your care thrive and you find yourself extraordinarily _lucky_?”

“What—”

“When you shook my hand,” he says, “I might have… blessed you.”

Both eyebrows rise this time and she stares at him for a moment before puffing out a small laugh. “An _angel_ then?”

Crowley grimaces. “Not quite.”

Her overworked brows pull into a frown. “Anthony, if your plan is to dance around this until I die of old age, then—”

“It’s not— It’s Crowley,” he says in a rush, pressing on before he can talk himself out of the admission. “My name. And I’m not an angel _anymore_.”

Adrielle says nothing, simply stares at him with an even, patient gaze.

Crowley takes a deep breath, and removes his glasses. Then he starts to tell her a story.

Unsure of where to begin, he decides on the beginning, reaching as far back as he can remember. He tells her of other planets, out among the stars, some drab and dusty, others vibrant swirls of color. He tells her about moons, how some planets have more than one, sometimes dozens. He tells her a story about a starmaker named Joriel, an angel who sculpted moons and created new colors to paint nebulae with. A young artist who was in love with the stars. An angel who spilled his ink and fell out of the sky.

In a lighthouse on a windswept island, nestled between the North Sea and the salt marshes, an old woman becomes the first human to learn what the inside of a moon looks like. What it _feels_ like. How each one is different and unique, and how even the ones that just look like chunks of rock can hold wonders and secrets beneath their surface.

Crowley isn’t sure how much of it she believes—how much of it she _can_ believe, given the scope of everything he’s saying—but the pensive stillness he had seen in her as a young woman returns as she listens. She watches him shrewdly, never taking her eyes off his, never balking from the strangeness of any of it. It’s when she starts her barrage of questions—endlessly curious, but rightfully skeptical—that he realizes what it is about her. What it’s always been about her.

It’s choice. It’s not by blind fate that she’s here with him in this lighthouse on the edge of the world. It might have been luck’s shadow that put them both in a churchyard full of death and jasmine forty five years ago, but it’s never been random chance that bound them together. It’s camaraderie. Caring because they want to. It’s a friendship that both of them _chose_ and nurtured in spite of how difficult it was. They had supported each other _because_ of how difficult it was.

When her questions turn to the Fall, he tells her about losing the stars in his eyes and becoming the serpent instead. He tells her about Hell and demons and Eden and, most importantly, the angel that guarded the Eastern Gate. Aziraphale, with his soft jasmine smile and his sea storm anger. Whose voice held impossible colors and a shining periwinkle laugh. The orchard that was only a touch away. How he fell a second time, much more slowly.

His tea is as cold as the sea and the subtle smell of jasmine has faded by the time he finishes speaking. A glance out the window shows the sun low in the sky. Crowley clears his throat and repositions his glasses on the bridge of his nose.

“Right then,” he says sheepishly. “I think that’s all of it.”

“Well I’m sure _that_ is absolutely false,” Adrielle says with a small snort. “But certainly, it’s enough.” She stares out the window for a few moments, the old grief humming in her in a new way that’s foreign to Crowley. “I can’t believe I let a literal _demon_ watch over me while I slept,” she mutters.

“Bloody stupid move on your part,” he says with a quick grin. “Look, I need to light the beacon. Do you… want to see it? If you’d prefer to rest—”

“Of course I want to see it, you idiot,” she interrupts, pushing her chair back and reaching for her cloak. “Did you honestly think I’d say no to that?”

He smiles to himself and leads the way up the stairs to the top of the tower where the raised brazier is smoldering, low and steady. It’s a breathtaking view from the top of the Brandaris— one that Crowley hasn’t stopped to appreciate in decades. Watching Adrielle do a slow lap of the light deck, however, serves as a reminder. She takes in the darkening sky beyond the dunes to the east, the murky and meandering chaos of the salt marshes to the south, and the fiery blaze over the smaller islands to the west with a hushed and reverent awe, before coming to rest beside Crowley. The two of them stand before the endless plain of the North Sea in contemplative silence, like two pilgrims at the start of a long journey.

_Or the end of one._

“It’s stunning,” she says soberly.

“It is.”

“And lonely.”

“It’s that too.”

“Crowley,” she says thoughtfully, “ _why_ are you here? And before you start in on your angel and the sea again,” she continues, cutting him off as he opens his mouth to speak, “I’m asking why _you_ are here. Not where he is.”

Crowley sighs and turns to lean back against the rail, crossing his arms as he faces the beacon. _Why? Why am I here? Why this sandy smudge of an island? Forty five years submerged in Aziraphale’s anger, his sadness, his stubbornness. If not Aziraphale, then why?_

“Clarity? Strength?” he answers tentatively, as though testing the words out. “Stars, I don’t know. It seems backwards, but I can feel less and think more while I’m here. And if—” he trails off, clears his throat, pinches the bridge of his nose. “If he never comes back—if Heaven _keeps_ him—I need to figure out how to… go on.”

There’s a long stretch of silence from Adrielle, colored in by the steady hum of the sea and the familiar rhythmic pulse of her decades-old grief. Eventually, she turns to face the beacon with him, mirroring his posture. “You’ll find a way,” she says, very softly. “It will feel impossible. It might feel like dying. But if there’s one thing I’ve always known about you, it’s that you push back against the darkness.”

“Subtle,” he mutters fondly.

“Seemed apt,” she replies lightly, before taking on a thoughtful tone again. “You surround yourself with the sea and the sky and the chaos of it all, like you hope to sink in it, but you’ve found you’re an island.” Her words come slowly. Carefully. As though she’s examining each one deliberately before selecting it and moving on to the next, a gardener tending to her plants or a painter mixing her pigments. “You’re made of stillness. The world grows old around you as you watch.”

She bites her lip and tilts her head back, as though following her thought process through the air. “Flowers,” she says with a satisfied nod, after a moment’s consideration. “We pick flowers and put them in vases, dry them and put them in tea, soak them to make perfume. We do it because it breaks out hearts to see them die on the vine. They always want more, these wretched hearts of ours. We have to believe we can do _more_ because we don’t have _time_ to grow stagnant. But you— you get to watch the flowers grow and die on the vine, and then see them reborn in spring. You have time to know the roots.”

“Right, _I’m_ the poetic one,” Crowley says, trying to force some snark into his voice.

In a fluid motion, he raises his hand and snaps his fingers, causing the hellfire in the brazier to flare to life. Adrielle staggers back against the rail and swears. He glances sideways at her and raises his eyebrows. “Told you I was lighting the beacon, didn’t I?” he says, putting his back to it and leaning on the rail again.

“It’s one thing to hear about… _all this_ ,” she says, glaring at him. “It’s another thing entirely to actually experience it. Without warning.” She sounds irritated, but still puts the fire at her back and faces the sea with him, falling into companionable silence.

When the last orange stripe of the sun slips beneath the horizon, Crowley says, “Will you tell me about the letters? Why the last one was in a different hand?”

The grief in her flares again— the shape of her heartache a unique and almost colorful thing. A shadow that Crowley had had time to memorize on the road, now old, strong, and nearly indistinguishable from the rest of her.

“I hired a scribe, in the beginning,” she says quietly, after a few beats of silence. “A friend that I made not long after opening the bakery. I kept a flower box outside the front window that she was very taken with. She would always ask what kinds they were when I planted new ones. Where I got the seeds.What I would be planting next. She was especially fond of the zinnias. They came in so many _colors_. One type of flower with a whole rainbow of colors.” Adrielle seems to drift off as she speaks, her voice growing smaller and dreamier. She returns to herself with a small shake and clears her throat. “When I found out what a talented scribe she was, it seemed like too good an opportunity to pass up.”

Crowley follows her stare out to the darkening horizon. He may be unable to physically _feel_ love anymore, but he thinks it would require snuffing out all of his earthly senses and then some to miss the fact that she’s dancing around its memory.

“You must have been very close,” he says softly. “I have twenty five years worth of letters downstairs.”

A deep breath from beside him. “We were very dear friends for many years. And then we were more. Always, we were enough. I… loved her very much. More than I thought I would ever be able to love again.” There’s an angry sniff, followed by a sharp sigh.

Hearing her talk about love, seeing the shape of the grief she’s learned to carry so elegantly, fills him with a pride he doesn’t expect. Respect and awe and an empathetic sorrow all swell in his chest. _I threw you a rope and you_ climbed _. Stars, you climbed so high._

“What was her name?”

Her sigh turns into a quick and cagey laugh. “You’re not going to believe me.”

“Unless you say ‘Aziraphale,’ I’m pretty sure I’ll believe you.”

“Grace.”

He turns to stare at her, alight with shock and amusement.

“It was her chosen name,” Adrielle says with a sad smile. “Less fateful than it sounds.”

“One could argue that that is _more_ fateful,” Crowley stammers.

She tilts her head and looks at him curiously. “If one believed in fate, perhaps,” she says, then turns to look at the darkening sky. “It was… an accurate descriptor. It _fit_ her. The way she moved, the way she talked. The way she treated people. And she was better with plants than I am. Our garden, Crowley,” she says, her voice taking on a dreamy lilt again. “It was magnificent and so much of it was her doing. All those drawings I sent you were from our garden.”

An easy silence falls between them as the last of the light drains from the sky, and Crowley finds himself filling in the gaps in his knowledge about her, coloring in the blank spaces with new shades. The feeling of a friendship that has come into itself like a fine wine is overwhelming.

“What happened?” he asks, when the first stars start to appear.

“Time. Just time. She fell asleep one night, then didn’t wake up the next morning,” she says thickly, the familiar heartbeat of her grief pulsing as she speaks. “As peaceful as you could hope for, really.”

She takes a deep, steadying breath and lets it out very slowly.

“You gave me all of that, you know. That day— in the jasmine. That was going to be the end of it. Instead I got the bakery and the garden and the time with Grace.” She pauses and frowns in thought for a moment. “What _was_ that by the way? In that churchyard. Magic?”

“Ah. Not quite. It was just a temptation. I was trying to show you another path, but choosing it was up to you. _That_ ,” he says, jerking his thumb over his shoulder at the beacon, “is magic. Far more boring.”

“If you say so,” she says with a soft chuckle. Then, after a moment’s consideration, “Why bother though? Why would someone like you saddle yourself with a needy and broken human?”

 _Because I needed to believe you could be saved. That you could save yourself._ “The end of the world was lonely,” he says, forcing a shrug.

She scoffs as though she doesn’t quite believe him, but he feels the aura of sorrow around her dissipate somewhat as they stand and watch the moon rise together.

* * *

Adrielle stays for three days, sleeping in one of the bedrooms intended for the lighthouse keeper’s family, while Crowley watches over the beacon at night. During the day, after she’s gone to the inn to procure food for herself, they walk through the forest and the dunes. When Crowley shows her the garden by the lake, she turns to him with a sly and understanding smile that quirks one side of her mouth higher than the other. It’s the first time he’s ever seen a smile fully bloom across her face, and with a pleasant jolt of surprise, he realizes she has dimples.

They walk along the north shore of the island, filling in the gaps in their histories with stories. Adrielle tells him about the small cottage she and Grace shared for a few quiet, loving decades, tries to convince him that pierniki is _not_ ‘just gingerbread,’ and how she adopted an obsessive love for fairy tales and folklore from Grace, who devoured stories at an almost _frightening_ clip. For the first time since the barn, she speaks of the family she had had before Grace, how they had been nomadic and how, by the time he met her, she had spent more of her life travelling than not. She expands the stories about Petya and her parents, her husband and their son, turning them into tangible people in Crowley’s mind.

In turn, Crowley tells her about Icarus and Aziraphale. About watching the ebb and flow of humanity with the two of them— Rome’s Colosseum and Egypt’s pyramids, crusades and empires, but also quieter moments between the lines. A bottle of wine shared in a dark corner of a tiny popina, taking in a play and bickering joyfully about it for hours afterwards, an angel learning trickery and a demon learning grace.

The stories flow out of him with far more ease than he would have thought. His mind tries to argue that it’s because she’s temporary, her mortality making her safe to confide in. His heart, always the louder of the two, yells that it’s because she’s a friend.

On the fourth day, she prepares to leave, fretting about leaving her wagon and horses at the stable on the mainland for much longer. She hesitates as she fiddles with organizing her pack, then pulls out a sturdy looking scroll case and turns to face him.

“I want you to have this,” she says, holding it out to him. “Please. It’s… important to me that you have this.”

Crowley accepts the case with a curious arch of an eyebrow, and carefully works the cap free. Inside is a roll of thick vellum which he pulls out and unrolls on the table.

It’s a portrait of a woman, smiling more with her eyes than her mouth. The page is painted in bright inks and pigments and almost resembles an illuminated manuscript for how colorful it is. Her eyes are a dark blue and a long honey-blonde braid is draped in front of one shoulder, fading into a half wreath of lilies across the bottom of the page. She is captured in such fine detail, such careful attention to nuance and personality, that Crowley feels he knows what her voice would have sounded like. He tries to imagine her laugh. What color Adrielle might assign to it.

He looks up at Adrielle, feeling his heart catch in his throat.

“You want _me_ to have this?”

“I have other drawings of her. It’s not as though I’m going to forget what she looked like,” she says with a thoughtful frown. “Besides, if you really are as untouched by time as you say, then I can't think of a better person to leave her memory with.”

Crowley thinks there might be more to it than that, but knows better than to press it. Instead he sets the portrait alongside the box of letters on the table and walks with her to the docks.

They don’t move to shake hands as they say goodbye this time. Crowley crosses his arms and stands with her as they wait for the boat she’s hired to prepare.

“Adrielle,” he says as she boards. “Goodbye. And… thank you.”

Her crooked smile flashes again, briefly. “You as well. Goodbye, Crowley.”

Then, for a second time, she’s gone.

* * *

** The stillness - 1414 **

It had been well over a thousand years since Crowley had forged a bond with a mortal. The friendships found in humans have the potential to be deeply rewarding, but also profoundly uncomfortable; their souls burn with an intensity not possessed by angels or demons, a brightness that is wild and deliberately defiant in the face of their fleeting existence. There is, by necessity, a drive present in them—a passion, an innovation, a burning need to _improve_ —that is foreign to the design of an immortal being.

The human soul is a truly stunning apparatus.

And a handful of times, Crowley has carved a space within him to make room for one. Unlike the binding threads he has come to associate with Aziraphale, he pictures these connections with mortals as a small shelf, created to hold a single candle. A warm and guiding light he can carry with him for a time.

The problem, however, with letting such a light into him, is the ache left behind when it inevitably goes dark.

He is standing in his usual haunt on the light deck, leaning over the rail and staring out over the dark expanse of the sea when he feels it. Adrielle’s faint candlelight, which he had carried with him for sixty five short years sputters, then winks out.

It doesn’t come as a surprise. From the moment he carved the shelf, he knew this time would come. He wishes he could be overjoyed that she’d lived as long as she did. That she had accepted the rope he had thrown her and _climbed_. That she had faced plagues and wars and impossible odds and somehow, she’d persisted. She’d thrived. She’d found Grace and the two of them had carved out a place of their own. In the same distant way he remembers his own angelic light, he _is_ overjoyed for her.

But in a much more tangible way, all he feels is the cold eddy of smoke that purls around the wick of a snuffed candle. Being prepared for the pain, as it turns out, does not make it hurt any less.

Crowley heaves a sigh and hangs his head between his shoulders, staring down at his feet. The hellfire beacon at his back burns hot and steadfast and uncaring. “Right then,” he mutters.

_They always want more, these wretched hearts of ours._

A rush of emotion that’s not quite anger and not quite fear surges through him. Without stopping to think about it too deeply, he lifts his head to the sky and says, “You already judged me. Made a real _point_ with that, you did. But judge her on her own. Forgiveness is supposed to be the _point_ with humans, right? She never asked for… any of this. See her for what she became, not the demons that plagued her.”

 _Please_ , he doesn’t say.

He closes his eyes and takes a breath, but the cold salt air is suddenly unbearable. Instead of suffering through the night, he pulls his coat around himself, heads down the stairs, and makes himself a cup of tea.

* * *

** The sea, the sky, the chaos of it all - 1414-1435 **

Not long after Crowley feels Adrielle’s candle go out, he finds himself spurred by a sudden stab of impermanence, of longing, of desperation, and begins writing letters to Aziraphale. He finds he’s too restless during the days to try and map his thoughts onto the page, and strangely unwilling to leave the beacon unattended at night. As a compromise with himself, he manifests a table and chair onto the light deck and spends his nights wedged between the sea and the sky, dredging his thoughts through ink by the light of the Brandaris.

Despite his best efforts, however, the letters are all rubbish. The problem isn’t being out of touch with his feelings— he knows _exactly_ where his heart stands on matters of Aziraphale. And the problem isn’t overworking his corporation or lack of sleep— the desire for sleep in the past century has been so rare that he sometimes wonders if he’s forgotten how. The _problem_ is that Crowley is not a writer. Night after night, he sits at the table and scrawls new lines, hoping that _this time_ will be the time his hand gets it right, _these words_ will be the ones that magically sort it all out, but ultimately finds he’s unable to translate anything he actually _means_ into meaningful words.

He’s tempted at first to crumple the trite letters and throw them into the beacon in a flare of frustration, but that feels like a betrayal somehow. The letters, even if they’re poorly formed and inaccurate, are still his. They’re still Aziraphales’s. Burning those thoughts and feelings and memories feels wrong on a fundamental level.

Instead, he begins to add new items to his supply list. The first and simplest request to be filled is wine. Every fortnight, when the messenger drops off his supplies, Crowley has her bring a case of wine, either from the local tavern or from the docks. Wherever she can find it. The wine itself is of little consequence— he simply miracles vinegar-quality into something more palatable. It’s the bottles he’s after.

On days when he hikes north to the garden, he goes with a bottle tucked under his arm, the wine drained and replaced with a tightly rolled letter, the cork shoved securely back in place. He continues past the garden to the northern shore and waits for the tide to ebb, then hurls the bottle into the waves.

_Let the sea carry it._

Crowley stands on the shore, watching the bottle bob and drift away from him until it’s out of sight, then turns his back to the sea.

* * *

It’s six months before the messenger is able to procure the next item from the docks. Crowley is outside repairing a window when he hears the cart trundling up the path, its load clinking and rattling merrily. He sets his tools down, pushes his glasses up on his nose, and circles around to the front of the lighthouse to greet her.

“Hi, sir!” comes the bright voice as the girl crests the hill.

“Hello, Duna. Anything good today?”

“Yes! You were right about the seeds,” she says, almost painfully cheerful. “I just kept asking every ship that stopped at the docks about them, and eventually someone actually had some.”

“What did I tell you,” Crowley says with a small smile. She drops the cart and he helps her unload the wine and supplies while she fiddles with a smaller, delicately wrapped package. “Pester someone long enough and you’re bound to get some answers. Any idea what kinds you got?”

“Um, well there are some tulip bulbs in the cart. I don’t know if those will grow here, but you did say _any_ flower seeds I could find.”

“That I did. Who knows, maybe they’ll take.”

“And I got these too!” she says excitedly, holding out the package. “I haven’t found chamomile or pansies yet, but this last ship had zinnias _and_ marigolds.”

“Two kinds! Good job,” he says, adopting her childlike excitement as best he can as he accepts the package.

She beams at him, chin held high and proud, then helps unload the rest of the cart. He gives her an extra coin for her trouble as she leaves, waving animatedly and promising to keep asking after his requests at the docks.

* * *

Over the next three years, Duna is able to hunt down chamomile and pansy seeds, as well as some surprises that Crowley hadn’t asked for—daisies, poppies, lily of the valley—and very slowly, the garden by the lake in the dunes expands. He sows the initial seeds, prods them out of the earth, utilizing his demonic influence when necessary to make sure they keep thriving. But as for how they wander across the ground, he lets them choose their own wild path. At the end of every season, the annuals drop their seeds and Crowley lets the wind and the rain and the birds decide where next year’s flowers will grow.

The muted streaks of lavender and speckles of cranberries are gradually surrounded by vibrant splashes of marigolds and poppies, the spaces in between filled with subtler touches of chamomile and daisies. The pansies and tulips take some coaxing, but once they are bullied above ground, they seem content enough with their lot in life. The zinnias he sows throughout the entire garden, and even goes so far as to convince them that they are perennials, if they know what’s good for them.

But it’s the lily of the valley that surprises him. He had planted them on the outskirts of the garden, tucking them back into the partial shade offered by the spindly trees, where they seem to huddle against the trunks. Arriving to the garden the first spring after planting them, he is immediately struck by the new smell in the air; delicate and crisp, floral and clean, a scent that reminds him of the earth after a gentle rain. It’s almost honey, not quite citrus, adjacent to old wood.

It’s a sigh away from jasmine.

Forgetting his original intent in the garden today, he wanders to the small copse of trees overlooking the garden and the lake, and sinks to the ground among the white flowers, putting his back against a tree. For a long while, he sits with his heart in his lap, oddly at ease as he breathes the flowers and thinks and feels everything he’s been skirting for decades. He examines the conversation with Adrielle above the North Sea for the first time. _You’ll find a way_ , she had said, with such _confidence_ in him. _It will feel impossible, but you’ll find a way._

The scent manages to be a reminder, letting his thoughts land softly in the shadowy place where lost love lives, without wrenching the reins to his heart away from him. It’s melancholy, but it’s also calming. It’s the shadows, but also the light that casts them. A way to remember, a way to hold his sadness and feel something besides the raw sting of heartbreak.

_Let the earth carry it._

Crowley sits in the spattering of bell-shaped flowers, breathing in the salt and the almost-familiar perfume as he watches over his wild sea of color like a sentry until the sun starts to set.

* * *

It’s another year before Duna is able to fill Crowley’s third request. The art supplies he had asked her to keep an eye out for are delicate and specialized, far from the regular fare that passes through Brandarius’ tiny harbor. Charcoal pencils and lacquer, parchment and vellum and canvas. Duna had been curious and confused by it, but she’s familiar enough with Crowley’s strangeness and evasiveness that she doesn’t question it until the order is filled. When she knocks on the lighthouse door to hand deliver the peculiar order and hazard a question about it, Crowley simply smiles, somewhat sadly, and says, “Sometimes, you have to create your own grace.”

(Duna finds herself thinking on this brief exchange for many years, haunted by something she can never quite put her finger on. Decades later, after marrying and resettling in Amsterdam, she will pick up a violin for the first time and understand, all in a flash, what the missing piece within her has always been.)

And then Crowley starts to draw. He’s middling at it at first— his artist’s intuition is a boon, but the tools are foreign and the learning curve is steep. His first attempts with the pencils are shaky and smudged, the lines either too thick or jagged and broken, the charcoal sometimes flaking and breaking in frustrating ways. Again he fights the urge to throw his failures into the fire, sealing them up in bottles and sending them the way of his letters instead.

Slowly, very slowly, he learns his way around charcoal— how to hold it, the correct pressure to apply to the page, how to blend and hatch and create smooth lines. He practices with the lighthouse at first, hiking into the dunes and sitting with a drawing board in his lap, tracing the regimented lines and corners of the Brandaris from a distance, memorizing the way it lies against the flow of the dunes and the sea around it. After this, he takes his tools to the garden and studies the shapes of the flowers. He sketches the smooth, simple curves of the lily of the valley before moving on to the pale, slim-fingered daisies, and finally graduating to the layered sunbursts of the marigolds.

In this quiet, careful manner, the years pass. Crowley stops trying to rid himself of the burden of grief and learns how to carry it instead.

When he feels he’s confident enough with his tools, he begins drawing from memory. During a particularly wet and cold winter, he lights the beacon at sunset and then holes up inside the lighthouse. He spends his nights at the small table, elbow propped on the surface and leaning his temple into his hand, staring down at the page and drawing Adrielle’s likeness by flickering lamplight.

He draws her as he remembers her, opting for the crow’s feet and kempt braids she had grown into instead of the turbulent storm of a person she had been when they first met. It’s weeks before he produces a product he’s happy with (a few versions of Adrielle end up bottled and thrown into the sea) but, eventually, a picture emerges that manages to feel vibrant and alive despite being in greyscale. He recreates her sharp, dark eyes, gives her the shrewd ghost of a smile, uses subtle shading to create the barest suggestion of dimples. When he finishes with her portrait, he draws a frame of zinnias and marigolds around it, hoping she would forgive him for the sentimentality.

With a satisfied nod, he starts the process of applying a preserving lacquer, then sets the drawing alongside Grace’s portrait.

_Teach the heart to carry it._

Crowley spends his final years at the lighthouse bottling imperfect portraits of Aziraphale and throwing them into the sea, until one day—a day like every day before it, only different in the subtlest way, a shift in the quality of light as nautical dawn pales to civil dawn—he finally sorts his heart onto the page.

* * *

In the spring of 1435, after the lily of the valley has come and gone for the season, Crowley knows it’s time to leave. The world will surely have bounced back by now, and while Hell has been accepting his reports about hellfire lures and shipwrecks, he is existing on borrowed time.

On the day when the messenger is due to make a delivery to the lighthouse, Crowley makes sure he is working outside the tower in order to catch the boy’s ear, telling him to pass a message along to the village, planting a seed that will reach the locals, the east end of the island. The docks and beyond if necessary.

_I’m being called away. The Brandaris needs a new keeper._

Then, he waits. He digs out the previous keepers’ journals from which he learned the trade and adds any necessary information to them. He organizes and inventories the tools and supplies, makes a map of known shipwrecks surrounding the island, moves fuel for the beacon to the light deck in preparation of the hellfire going out. He carefully packs and wraps his drawings.

He says goodbye to the garden.

By the end of summer, while the marigolds are still bright but the zinnias have faded, the call has been answered. The new keeper is to be a nondescript middle-aged man, notable to Crowley only for his skittishness and the sorrowful loneliness that radiates out of him.

Crowley gives him a brief tour, leaves a bit of tea in the cupboard (miraculously fresh, despite its age), then leaves the man to deal with his ghosts in peace.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [hand shadows and a final wave](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VIGioQ7tfXg)
> 
> Shout out to [FancyTrinkets](https://archiveofourown.org/users/FancyTrinkets), who planted the image in my mind of a lovesick Crowley throwing bottle after bottle of letters into the sea. I absolutely couldn't shake it once it took root.
> 
> Want to see some amazing fanart for this chapter? It's right over [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/618027981644906496/for-jessicafish-the-latest-chapter-of-a)!


	15. Interlude II - I tried to write it down but I could never find a pen

_"Through the unknown, unremembered gate_  
_When the last of earth left to discover_  
_Is that which was the beginning;_  
_At the source of the longest river_  
_The voice of the hidden waterfall_  
_And the children in the apple-tree_  
_Not known, because not looked for_  
_But heard, half-heard, in the stillness_  
_Between two waves of the sea."_

_-_ T.S. Eliot, “Little Gidding”

When does a story end? Can a story ever _truly_ end? You may close a book and slot it back between the bookends, but if its story sets a spark in even one imagination, if it is carried further in even one heart— can that be called an ending?

Consider, if you would, a comet.

It would be tempting to look at a comet and see a fleeting light. A shooting star that passes the planet, a once in a lifetime sighting, blink and you’ll miss it. But what of the pieces of itself that it leaves behind? The debris it shakes off its back and drops like bread crumbs, tracing its path through the cosmos. Scraps for the earth to pass through centuries later, the shed memories of a comet lighting up the sky as a meteor shower. You may miss your one chance to see the comet, but you will have hundreds of opportunities to see its ghost dance through the heavens in extraordinary ways.

And even with a death, a fall, a breaking— someone will always be there to pick up the pieces and carry them to their next chapter. To nurture and tend to them, to see what they might become.

Perhaps stories really are as simple and as vast as autumn yielding to winter, or the sun setting and making room for the stars. The endless cycle of sunlight reaching into the night by way of reflecting off the moon, before the earth rolls over and starts its dream again.

Perhaps, then, every ending is simply the beginning of something new.

* * *

**The Earth Project: iteration 22**

Joriel opened his eyes and took in the scene around him. It almost resembled a forest, but the trees were too logically arranged for that to be the case. They stretched out in neat rows around him, slender trunks giving way to leafy canopies weighted down with some sort of red fruit. Sunlight filtered through the leaves above him to create shifting dappled patterns across the grass. Clusters of purple flowers dotted the ground, huddled close to the trees in some places, half-crushed under the weight of overripe fallen fruit in others. The sweet smell of fruit and flowers mingled with rich loam and hung heavy in the air.

He regarded the vibrant scene around him with mild disinterest and heaved a heavy sigh.

He had chosen a spot on the globe completely at random, marching right up to it and stabbing at the first spot that looked green enough to put ground under his feet. It didn’t matter to him _where_ he ended up, as long as it put some distance between himself and the other starmakers. Between himself and Heaven, the cosmos, and the bloody, burning _questions_ that wouldn’t stop swirling around his head. He needed space. Needed to clear his mind. He knew absolutely nothing about this new project the Almighty had picked up, but he did know that being planetside would at least let him be small. Inhabiting a physical form, at the moment, seemed like a step in the right direction.

_Just pick a direction and take the next step I guess. Seems as good a way to start as any._

He spun on his heel and began to stalk through the trees, kicking at some of the fallen fruit as he went. He made it several paces before hearing the rustle and snap of air being displaced behind him.

 _Stars above, is there nowhere in this universe I can go to get a little privacy_. Pushing down a wave of annoyance, Joriel grit his teeth and turned to face whoever it was who had followed him to the planet.

The angel standing in the orchard was not anyone he recognized. He had pale skin and paler hair, wide blue eyes, and held his hands in front of him in an anxious knot. He stood staring at Joriel, looking utterly out of place as he opened and closed his mouth a few times, trying to find his voice.

“Um. Hi,” Joriel said, finally breaking the silence.

The sound seemed to snap the stranger out of his trance and he stood up straight, dropping his hands to his sides. “Right. Hello. Terribly sorry to have followed you. I’m not _entirely_ sure why I did, if I’m being perfectly frank,” he said. His voice chimed through the air, finding its way into Joriel’s head as words that glowed a bright azure at their center.

Joriel continued to stare dumbly, his physical senses suddenly very overwhelmed. It was a colorful landscape they stood in - dusky yellow light, lush green trees, red fruit, splashes of purple wildflowers - made suddenly brighter by a sourceless, inexplicable blue that was flooding his awareness.

“Erm,” Joriel managed.

“You just - oh dear, how to put this,” the pale stranger raised a hand to massage his temple and started looking around, as though the answer could be found somewhere in the trees surrounding them. “You seemed like— well— like a _sea at storm_. For lack of a better term. I was on my way down to the planet myself, saw you in the main hall and thought to myself, ‘now there’s a fellow who looks like he could use a friend,’ and Heaven help me I just followed the urge. I have no idea why. Completely out of my character to be honest. It just… seemed like the thing to do? Oh dear,” the words surrounding Joriel took on a lighter hue as the stranger babbled, softening into a pale sky blue.

Something about the absurdity of the whole situation cracked Joriel’s exterior. He was aware that he would normally be annoyed, but only distantly. There was something so inherently _comforting_ about this bumbling stranger that, in spite of himself, he felt a slow smile start to bloom on his face. “Joriel,” he offered.

“Er. Beg your pardon?”

“My name. Joriel.”

“Ah! Yes! Joriel, a pleasure,” the tension in his posture melted and he broke into a relieved smile. A strong floral smell found its way to Joriel, wrapping déjà vu around his mind like a veil of smoke. He felt a far-off piece of himself trying to hone in on it, only to have the haze of it drift further from his grasp and dissipate. “Aziraphale,” the stranger continued.

“Well, Aziraphale. Welcome to Earth, I suppose. First time?”

Aziraphale nodded. “It’s been difficult finding the time. The archive keeps me very busy these days.”

“A chronicler, then?” Joriel asked. _That would explain why I’ve never seen you. At least… I think I’ve never seen you._

Aziraphale took a few tentative steps toward him, his gaze darting around distractedly. Introductions having taken the edge off of their interaction, his attention seemed to have permission to wander. “Yes, and there seems to be no end of new information to record. One would think the starmakers would run out of ideas eventually, but they just _keep going_.”

Joriel laughed and leaned against a tree, feeling himself relax into the company of this strange chronicler, finding him a welcome change from the starmakers. “Sorry about that. She gave us a pretty long leash and it’s quite the playground up there.”

Aziraphale had been in the process of examining a fruit-laden branch, but froze in his tracks when Joriel laughed. “Oh. _Oh_ , you’re a starmaker,” he said, the color of his voice shifting back to azure as he released the branch. “Of course. I thought your name sounded familiar. Must have seen it in the books. Er— I meant no offense.”

“None taken. My lot could probably stand to be taken down a few pegs. Didn’t realize we were causing such a bother for the chroniclers.”

“Not a bother at all,” Aziraphale said very soberly, turning to lock eyes with Joriel. “Keeping a record of the blossoming cosmos has been a gift. There have been millions of stories and somehow they’re all unique.”

Something about the sincerity in Aziraphale’s voice made Joriel’s heart ache. There was a desperate innocence there, existing harmoniously with his curiosity. A facet Joriel had once seen in himself. A trait that had been buffed out at some point without him even realizing it. “I guess I never thought of it that way. I’ve gotten so used to seeing it from behind the scenes and it’s a bit… chaotic.”

“Surely it’s not _that_ chaotic. The end products all seem so deliberate.”

“I can’t speak for all starmakers, but I _can_ tell you that my plans almost never end up how I think they will. I don’t usually know how a thing will turn out until it’s finished.”

Aziraphale let out a bright, periwinkle chuckle, a sound that dragged the floral aroma behind it to pull Joriel back into the confusing feeling of a dream half-remembered. “Didn’t you do Jupiter’s moons? You know, I _wondered_ about those when I was putting them in the books. All those hidden oceans. And the _volcanoes_ , honestly,” he said with an amused shake of his head. He circled his tree as he spoke, examining its bark and leaves carefully, a scholar taking careful note of his new environment.

“Oh, those were all planned. Sort of,” Joriel responded, shoving off his tree and giving the fruit on the ground another disinterested kick. “Fancy a walk?”

“Er. Alright,” Aziraphale said, abandoning his tree and falling in beside Joriel. “How do you _sort of_ plan volcanoes and oceans?”

“By wanting too much I suppose,” Joriel shrugged, finding another piece of fallen fruit to kick. “I knew I wanted volcanoes and oceans and _secret_ oceans and nonsensical underground labyrinths and— anyway. It was too much to fit on one moon. So I just kept making more.”

Aziraphale laughed his strange periwinkle laugh again and Joriel tried to convince himself that chroniclers obviously must be a different stock and that’s all there was to it. That they must be so full of whimsy and stories that it all had to find a way to overflow however it could. The image of stories shining through Aziraphale like light reaching through cracks in a wall only seemed to further agitate the feeling of _familiarity_ creeping in at the back of his mind.

“You wanted eighty moons worth of topographical features?”

“Nah, I wanted way more, but I got reassigned before I finished.”

“Perhaps they thought you’d never be done unless you had some intervention. I’m not sure how many more moons Jupiter could have sustained,” Aziraphale said. His voice was deadly serious, but Joriel caught that hint of flowers again and could see a soft smile on the chronicler’s face out of the corner of his eye.

“Uh. Lots, probably,” he managed. Aziraphale had managed to throw him fully off his center in a matter of minutes and he found himself trying to catch up.

They walked in silence for a while, Aziraphale piping up only when he admired the trees ( _apple trees_ , as he informed Joriel) or stooped to admire clusters of purple flowers growing around their trunks ( _hyacinths_ , according to Aziraphale). Joriel continued to kick at the apples as they walked, doing his best to listen to the soothing sky blue voice accompanying him, but finding that his mind insisted on wandering back up to the stars. To the whispered questions passing between the starmakers. To Lucifer, who seemed intent on the spread of this unrest.

It had started so simply. The suggestion that they should take pride in their work. The idea that they were given the gift of creativity for the purpose of making art in the heavens. From there came the debate about what it _meant_ for something to be art. If art could be made without passion, curiosity, and love. If it could be done without free will. It was a veil that, once lifted, could never be put back. Joriel found himself steeping in anger and indignation over how _helpless_ it all made him feel.

“Are you quite sure you’re alright?” Aziraphale asked after an especially enthusiastic kick sent an apple flying into a nearby tree trunk with a wet thud. His voice, suddenly bright and silver, cut through Joriel’s thoughts like a knife, pulling him back into the moment. “You seem… troubled.”

“Yeah. Sorry. Just thinking. Been a bit busy up in the cosmos lately. Hard to shake it off when I come down.” He decided it was probably best to keep concerns of dissent among angels to himself for now. No reason to drag Aziraphale into that mess. They hardly even knew each other after all, and Joriel was finding it rather comforting to be around someone who wanted to talk about simple things like apples and hyacinths for a change.

“What are you working on now?” Aziraphale asked, the silver edge to his voice softening back to its normal blue glow. “I’d love to hear how you plan to top _secret oceans_.”

“I’ve been trying to get this star system just right. I know how I want it to _end up_ in my head, but something always seems to go wrong right at the end. It always seems to fall apart and has to be reshaped into a nebula,” he said, feeling as though he were listening to himself from very far away. That distant part of him wondered why he was pouring out the details of his passion project to a chronicler he barely knew when it was something he hadn’t even wanted to talk to his fellow starmakers about. He decided he didn’t care, and pressed on anyway. “I just loved how Alpha Centauri turned out and I’ve been trying to recreate something like it on my own. A contact binary with their own system of planets. Planets that I can surround with an absurd number of moons and maybe one day they can support life. I can get the first star to form just _fine,_ but when I try to add the second, it always falls apart.”

Joriel fell silent with a small sigh, realizing that he had been rambling about one thing and worrying about another. He kicked at another apple.

“Anyway,” he mumbled when Aziraphale didn’t chime in. “Just distracted I suppose.”

“I didn’t realize She had given the starmakers so much power,” Aziraphale finally said, speaking very softly.

“I don’t think it’s power She’s given us.” Joriel thought of Lucifer again and felt the familiar discomfort rumble in his center. “I get how it might look that way, but all it really is is a very specific kind of control over a very particular environment. We operate entirely within Her rules.” _Which is part of the problem._

“But you’re making entire _worlds_. Stars and moons and nebulae. That doesn’t seem like power to you?” Aziraphale asked, his tone taking on the steely, metallic sheen.

“We’re not creating _life_. We’re just setting a bunch of stages. Think of it more like art. We’re just up there painting and sculpting. I’m writing stories in the stars just like you do in books. In a way, the chroniclers have more power than the starmakers.”

“Oh, come now.”

“I mean it! Think about it. You commit these stories and records to the permanent collective memory for the betterment of future thinkers and scholars. Anything _I_ make is immortalized by _you_.” Joriel sensed the sharp grey edge to Aziraphale’s voice and chose his words carefully, not wanting to push him to anger. “Words are a kind of control too. They hold just as much power as you allow them to.”

“I don’t need them to hold _power_ , I only need them to hold _information_ ,” Aziraphale bit back, his voice starting to glint dangerously.

Joriel stopped walking and stared at him. “You truly think those are separate things?”

Aziraphale’s brows drew together in a distressed frown and Joriel felt he could see the wheels turning behind his eyes as he searched for a proper response. Tension manifested tangibly in the air between them, bringing an image of waves breaking against a cliff face to the front of Joriel’s mind. He could smell salt and brine as he stared at Aziraphale. _Like a sea at storm._ Desperate to keep things civil, he raised his hands in front of him in a placating gesture. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean anything by it. It’s really…” he trailed off, pinching the bridge of his nose and feeling suddenly very tired. “It’s just been a frustrating few days.”

Aziraphale seemed to soften at this. The wave receded as his frown turned to a look of genuine concern. Cautiously, he closed the distance between them and placed a hand on Joriel’s shoulder. “I think,” he said slowly, the steel in his voice giving way to bright silver, “that perhaps while we’re down here, we are on a much more even footing. The chronicler and the starmaker can stay in the heavens for now. Why don’t we just take a moment to see what Earth is about? What do you say?”

Joriel raised his eyes to meet Aziraphale’s, feeling strangely steadied by the weight of the hand on his shoulder. He breathed deeply of the air around him, letting the smell of apples and turned earth bring his mind back down to ground. “Yeah,” he said, his voice heavy and soft. “I think that sounds perfect.”

* * *

It wasn’t even a surprise this time, watching Her shy, studious chronicler and Her curious, chaotic starmaker find each other. Somehow, they were almost a comfort. The one parameter that managed to remain constant across all Her experiments. She observed as they walked through the orchard and spoke of mundane, earthly things. Joriel prodded gently and carefully, always watchful of Aziraphale’s comfort level. Aziraphale began to slowly lengthen the leash on his imagination. Eventually, they found a way to meet in the middle.

They started small, running through the names of trees and flowers.

 _“Seriously, is there a single thing down here that you_ don’t _know the name of?” Joriel had wondered._

 _Aziraphale tilted his head, confused. “I’m a chronicler. Knowing the names of things is rather the_ point _.”_

Joriel soon began testing the waters, daydreaming out loud about the way the sunlight filtering through the boughs caused shadows to dance and sway.

_“If you let your mind wander, it almost looks like you’re underwater,” Joriel had mused._

_“Why would you let your mind wander underwater?” Aziraphale asked, genuinely bewildered_.

They soon graduated to looking for images in the clouds.

_“See, if you start at the peak of that cirrus and then follow it down, it’s sort of like the wing of the bird,” Joriel had pointed out._

_Aziraphale squinted and laughed, “Yes, I suppose when you put it that way…”_

The two of them returned to Earth many more times. Joriel seemed ever anxious to get away from the starmakers and they both seemed increasingly eager to see each other. However, unlike previous iterations of Earth where they constantly sought out new spots to explore, they returned to the same grove of apple trees every time, greeting it as though it were an old friend. A comfort. A home. They charted the borders of the orchard and walked slow, lazy laps around it, content to remain in the self-imposed boundary provided by the trees.

It was along this border that Aziraphale found the grapevines, twining deftly up the trunks of the apple trees and mingling in their boughs. He delighted at the strange image of the purple fruit hanging in clusters, defiant and out of place alongside the apples. Joriel delighted in Aziraphale’s joy. He would pull on the distracted smile he had taken to wearing in Aziraphale’s company and lean against a tree to watch his companion. It was a physical quirk She had watched remain constant across his trips to the various Earths; when his emotions swelled, he would find somewhere to lean or sit, a way to ignore his body and let his heart take over.

Aziraphale, of course, already knew everything the archive had to offer about grapes, but it was a casual remark from Joriel that made him realize he didn’t know what they _tasted_ like. He blushed, laughed, and whole-heartedly agreed as he pulled a cluster free from the branches. They sat cross-legged in the grass, eating grapes, and exchanging stories as the sun set on the two of them in their wild garden sanctuary.

The contrast between their interactions here and their time by the sea was striking, and from Her workspace, God found Herself struggling to puzzle it out. The environment, perhaps? It wasn’t out of the question that a soft colorful landscape would affect the mood in different ways than the harsh grey of the seaside cliffs. Angels weren’t supposed to be susceptible to drastic mood shifts, but that didn’t mean they were immune. Or maybe subtle developments happened in their time in Heaven - it was only memories of Earth She was removing after all. And of course, random chance was entirely possible as well. She adored planting tiny seeds of chaos and seeing what new information would grow from them too much to not sew these seeds into all Her portraits. Any one of them could have found a home in the subconsciouses of Aziraphale or Joriel.

Or perhaps they really were just changing. Maturing and evolving, burying small memories of each other in places within them deeper than the mind. Unknown treasures tucked away in the soul. She hadn’t designed souls to hold imprints, but She hadn’t designed angels to ask questions either. The implications of both were troubling, but also fascinating.

And so it came to be that She designed Her final Earth, fashioning a new sort of creature to inhabit and influence it. Creatures chaotic and mortal, imaginative and curious, full of love and stubbornness and their own spark of creativity.

As a final nod to Her two oblivious muses, She created a garden, complete with an apple tree. The first test for Her new children.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [together we filled the world with colored wine, but the story nears the present time](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2ixv0blOFR1BFRi8ZfIpyn?si=BSWe3DGwRW-YBVB2P3PoTQ)
> 
> Some wonderful fanart for this chapter can be found over [here](https://singasongrightnow.tumblr.com/post/618105542466011136/jessicafish-how-dare-you-give-me-so-many)!


	16. I hear overtones that make this another song

** Barcelona - 1485 **

There had been a calm few months after returning to Florence in which Aziraphale had been eased into a sense of peace. Zophiel’s recommendation that he remain the agent on Earth had left Gabriel bristling, and after over a century of being cooped up in the archives, Aziraphale had been eager to get planetside and put his head down to wait out that particular storm.

As for returning to Florence— well. That had just felt somehow fitting. Like closing a loop, or picking up the pieces from 1347 and rebuilding. Everything had been in such awful disarray when he’d last seen the city—what with the plague and the war and the _argument_ —that he’d found his mind had a tendency to linger there. He’d acquired comfortable rooms near a bustling piazza and settled in to see how humanity had bounced back in his absence.

And bounce back they had, the resilient dears. It really was a lovely few months, full of art and good food and peaceful strolls along the Arno, time stretching out luxurious and unburdened in front of him.

Then he had received the order to assess _the situation_ in Spain. Apparently whatever gears had been set into motion there were not of Heaven’s doing and the possibility of hellish influence was enough of a worry that they wanted an angel on site for possible thwarting.

So he had booked passage to Barcelona and braced himself for a war. Prepared for horrors such as he’d seen in previous plagues or floods. Steeled himself for something as extreme as fire raining from the sky and people turning to salt. Instead, he’d had a pleasant enough week at sea, listening to sailors’ stories and shanties, and piecing together news about an _Inquisition_ as best he could from ghost stories and scraps of gossip. By the time he arrives in Barcelona’s harbor, his curiosity is thoroughly piqued.

He’s standing on the docks, watching the sunk sink into the sea, when he tastes the first hint of salt. Oysters, seaweed, and brine like a maritime ghost at the back of his throat. A sensation he hasn’t felt in 138 years (he’s counted every one). It’s oysters and salt, but it’s also not. No matter how much seafood he samples, nothing ever _quite_ captures it correctly. Nothing ever quite fills in the blank left by Crowley, except Crowley himself.

Aziraphale’s heart jumps to his throat. _Why is he here? And why is he the sea?_

He takes a shaky breath and shuts his eyes, pouring all of his concentration into Crowley’s sea, feeling their thread pull between them. It’s a strong sensation, far stronger than he’s ever felt. Where once it had been a delicate string of spider’s silk, poised to snap at the blink of an eye, he now feels something as strong and resonant as a violin string. Emotions flood him in a rush— worry, care, devotion. The love, ancient and steadfast, that all of them rest upon.

Aziraphale doesn’t stop to think about it. He doesn’t linger on their last meeting or the implications of Crowley being in the exact place he was sent to investigate. Heart thudding and breath quickened, he opens his eyes and follows the thread, letting Crowley’s sea drag him in.

He lets the thread pull him from his mooring and through the streets, hardly registering any of the sights or people around him, until eventually his anchor is dropped in an alleyway between a tavern and a blacksmith. Crowley is slumped against a building, his chin on his chest and his hand curled around an empty bottle. If it wasn’t for the mouthful of salt and the mindful of waves, Aziraphale might have guessed him unconscious. He supposes he might be anyway— that Crowley’s dreams could still reach out to him in this way. An intriguing thought that he tries not to dwell on as he crouches in front of him.

“Crowley,” he says gently, trying to pull both the softness of the chronicler and the fierceness of the principality into his voice. The result simply sounds confused, but Crowley seems too far gone to notice. “Crowley, dear boy, what are you doing here?” he says, letting the armor around his voice go and the emotion shine through.

Crowley’s hand twitches where it holds the bottle and he lets out a guttural sound from somewhere deep in his chest. Even without proper words, the sound finds its way to Aziraphale as a flash of color— dark orange, red, and rust mingling together in overwhelming ways, the violin string between them vibrating as though its musician were pulling it into tune. Aziraphale sucks in a quick breath at the sight, letting his eyes flutter briefly closed as the familiar comfort lights up the air around him.

“Honestly, this seems excessive, even for you,” he says, fully aware of how _fond_ he sounds. “Are you keeping rooms nearby? I hardly feel like an alley is a comfortable place to sleep off… _whatever_ it is you’ve got in your system.”

He knows he could force Crowley to sober up. A snap of his fingers and a focus of his will and the job would be done, but that feels like a step too far. If Crowley wants to be in this state, he likely has a reason, and if he doesn’t— well, then he can simply solve the problem himself.

Crowley begins to stir as he speaks and Aziraphale decides to keep pushing that angle. He laces his fingers together and props his elbows on his knees, peering into Crowley’s face as he speaks about nothing in particular, hoping to reel his friend in from distress.

“I’ve only just gotten into town, you know. My ship arrived just in time to see the sun set. I _do_ love watching it set into the sea. Something about how the reds and oranges catch on the water. Simply _marvelous_ ,” he breathes, letting a small smile flicker across his face.

Even without the marigolds and the vineyard and the gold, just being near Crowley again feels like an enormous weight lifted from him. He has no idea the extent of the situation that has brought him to Spain— simply assumes it’s going to be a hard one to bear if it’s drastic enough to have made it into Heaven’s sights. But there’s a startling comfort to suddenly being near Crowley after so long without him. Even after how they had left things in Florence, it feels so _natural_ to return to his orbit. Like there is no argument they can face that won’t have an eventual solution.

 _Like coming home_.

“Not even been here an hour, so I’m afraid I haven’t arranged lodging yet. If you’ve got a place I could get you to, it would be ever so much more convenient.”

A small strangled sound comes from the heap in front of him as Crowley lifts his head a fraction. His glasses have slid to the end of his nose and he squints blearily at Aziraphale. “Wha— ‘Ziraphale?”

“Hello, Crowley.”

“How— Why— S’that fucking _jasmine_?” The red fades from his voice as he begins to eke out real words, a glimmer of brass creeping in to replace it.

“It’s good to see you too,” Aziraphale says, doing his best to smile reassuringly around the salt in his mouth and the concern knitting his brows together. “Rooms, my dear. Where are you staying? Unless you plan on sobering yourself up right now—which, given your track record, I doubt you will be doing—I’d much prefer to catch up somewhere more, er… comfortable.”

Crowley continues to squint up at him for a few seconds before letting out an exaggerated _pfff_ sound that requires the full use of his shoulders. The brass flashes brightly, a luster that falls just short of gold. “Yeah, angel. Villa Aloja. Rooms,” he slurs, slumping back against the wall.

“Right then. Excellent,” Aziraphale says, clapping his hands together. “Up you get.”

“Nah. Sleep here.”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Up!” Aziraphale says briskly, climbing to his feet. When Crowley tucks his chin back against his chest and huffs stubbornly from the ground, Aziraphale rolls his eyes and moves to his side. “Crowley,” he says firmly, lowering to one knee once more. “I’m going to help you up now. Is that alright?”

There’s no more huffing at that. The image of a wave pulling back from the shore passes through Aziraphale’s mind as Crowley turns to look at him. Even as he sways slightly, he seems to focus in on Aziraphale and the request. He bites his lower lip and gives an exaggerated nod.

Aziraphale doesn’t hesitate. He doesn’t prepare himself either. He finds he doesn’t want to. Looping one arm behind Crowley’s back and grabbing the wrist that drapes across his shoulder with his free hand, he heaves Crowley to his feet.

For all intents and purposes, the world disappears.

There is simply this: Crowley’s weight beside him, a weight that he chooses to support, a weight that has never been a burden. A mouthful of grapes, bittersweet and bright and luscious. Visions of an overgrown vineyard, just waking up as early spring flowers push their way through the sleepdrunk winter ground. And a smell… a rich, earthy smell. Mulch and flowers and the faintest hint of apples.

There is a gasp or perhaps just a drunkenly hitched breath from beside him as they stand in the dusky alleyway, swaying slightly as Crowley leans his weight against him. Aziraphale tries for a valiant moment to keep his mind on the task at hand, before letting his eyes slip closed again and giving himself over to their wild garden.

It’s a feeling that manages to feel both maddeningly familiar and utterly foreign. The feeling of _I know this place, I’ve been here, I made a home here once,_ coupled with the knowledge that, like a dream, the memory of this vineyard will begin to fade the second he leaves. That it will go back to being a secret covetously held by the space between them.

Aziraphale finds himself wondering at the past century and a half as he floats in this dreamscape, tasting grapes, smelling apples, feeling sunlight on his skin. He muses on how, even when they were on opposite sides of the planet, the earth always found a way to whisper Crowley’s name. He wonders what Crowley’s path from plague-torn Florence to this moment looked like. More than anything, however, he marvels at how they always seem to come back to this. No matter how far they travel or how long they’re apart, the earth always seems to pull them back together.

A length of time passes that is more than a minute but less than a year. When Aziraphale opens his eyes again, none of the stars have come out yet and the sky is still a dusky purple. He supposes it’s possible that a full twenty four hours have dissolved into the vineyard and this is tomorrow’s sky he’s looking at. Time may not hold physical sway over them, but his body feels strange somehow— too heavy and too sensitive. Too hungry for food and air and water and all the things he technically doesn’t need. He swallows thickly.

“Can you walk on your own?” he murmurs.

Crowley pulls away from him tentatively, testing the waters. When his knees start to buckle and wobble, he collapses back against Aziraphale, causing an explosion of grapes in his mouth. “Don’t think so, angel,” he says weakly, his voice painted in coppery orange and brass.

“Can you sober up?”

There’s a grunt from beside him, then in an even thinner voice, “Don’t think so.”

“Alright. That’s fine,” Aziraphale says softly. “Just… lean, alright? I’ll get us there.”

Another grunt, this time paired with an enthusiastic lean.

A tiny puff of humorless laughter—almost a sigh, not quite a scoff—escapes Aziraphale as the absurdity of the situation settles on him. He gives Crowley a playful nudge in the ribs as he begins to steer them out of the alley. “You’re going to have to navigate once I get us there. I only know where the building is and I’m _quite_ sure you haven’t rented out the whole thing.”

“Pfft. Shows what you know,” Crowley slurs at him. His voice flashes bright saffron, spirited and wily, with a layer of brassy melancholy lying underneath. “‘M’very impornt— imporsh— A big deal, angel. They _love me_ here.”

Aziraphale swallows a smile as he gets to the street and points them in the direction of Crowley’s inn. He knows the city is continuing its life around them— that taverns must be bustling, that people must be working their way home, that shops will be closing for the night. He also knows that people are probably staring at them, seeing a richly dressed socialite in pale, clean silks all but carrying a grubby, dark-spectacled urchin. He knows this is true because it _must_ be true, but he perceives none of it. He lets his knowledge of Barcelona’s streets carry their feet to the proper destination, while the rest of him strolls through a garden full of apple trees and grapevines.

 _That they do, my dear_ , he thinks, giving Crowley’s wrist a small squeeze.

* * *

As it turns out, Crowley does not have the entire building rented out, but he does have an entire floor. The rooms are large and opulent and entirely unlived in. Aziraphale raises his eyebrows curiously as he pushes the door open with his shoulder and peers inside. With a casual snap of his free hand, he lights all the candles.

“How long have you been here?” he asks, closing the door with one foot and steering Crowley in the direction of the sitting room.

Crowley lets out a few bleats of nonsense sounds and collapses onto the plush sofa with a grunt. Without the distraction of grapes and apple trees, the room seems even more lavish. “Dunno,” Crowley mutters from the cushions. “A week or three?”

“Whatever _for_? Crowley, what’s going on here? My orders were extremely vague and the city at first blush seems nowhere near as dreadful as what sailors’ gossip would have you believe.”

Crowley scrubs at his face with his hands, a string of garbled noises bubbling up from within him. “‘S’beacause it’s not on the surface,” he manages, his voice rusty and miserable. “It’s _hidden_. They start the rot at the _center_.”

“ _Who_?”

Another tired scoff from behind his hands. “Humans.”

“Crowley, what—” Aziraphale starts, feeling frustration start to build.

Crowley cuts him off with a groan and a sigh as he stumbles to his feet. “The _Inquisition_? 'S'why you’re here, I take it?” he grumbles, staggering towards a basin in the corner and disappearing behind an opaque screen. “I had nothing to do with it, despite what you’re prob’ly thinking.”

“I _wasn’t_ , actually,” Aziraphale says, following after Crowley. He crosses his arms and leans against the wall, putting the screen between them. “Finding you here was something of a surprise.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was for me too,” he says faintly, clearing his throat. The sound of water splashing comes from behind the screen. “They… sent me a commendation. Hell did, I mean,” he continues, sounding suddenly sober. _And sad,_ Aziraphale thinks, focusing on the dark red edges to his voice. The places where the rust has flaked away to reveal a mottled red underbelly, like an exposed muscle. _Frustrated and anxious and heartsick. Lord, has he always been this easy to read or has he just never been this upset?_

“It's been a busy couple centuries downstairs,” Crowley continues, “so I guess it's not that surprising that a wire got crossed somewhere. I wasn’t about to let on that I had no bloody clue what they were talking about though, so I came to— To see—” the rust continues to peel away, leaving him raw and red and exposed. “Christ, angel. It’s so much worse than— It’s fucking _horrible_.”

Aziraphale watches his amorphous silhouette through the screen as he talks. The edges of it are blurred and fuzzy, but he can still see it bending over the corner where the basin is when the water splashes, then falling still as Crowley’s voice begins to bleed into the air. The metallic tang of oysters and seawater hits Aziraphale’s mouth again as choppy waves build in the space between them.

“They’ve really got it down to a science. Far more structured than Hell could ever hope to be.” The shadow behind the screen moves to the wall and sinks to the floor. Aziraphale rests his temple against the wall and stares into the murky barrier between them, feeling that even if he were to look away, Crowley’s dark spot would follow like a floater in his vision.

“Crowley,” he says softly.

“There’s this new _Grand Inquisitor_ , see?” Crowley continues as though he hadn’t heard Aziraphale, spitting out the title like a curse, his voice red and dripping. “He’s got it all wrapped up in a mountain of articles and decrees. And the _loopholes_ they find. The _lengths_ they go to just to hurt each other. Hate and misery and torture— literal torture. Torture hidden inside layers of legislature.”

“Crowley…”

“The church won’t let inquisitors spill blood, so they’ve gotten _creative_. Found ways to stretch you and break you and half drown you without ever breaking the skin.” His voice starts to fracture as he speaks, anger and dejection seeping through the cracks. Aziraphale finds he can read it as easily as a book.

“ _Crowley_.” A dull thump comes from behind the screen, the hollow sound of a head hitting a wall, then Crowley falls silent. “It’s good to see you,” Aziraphale says.

There’s nothing either of them can do about Heaven or Hell or humans in this situation. No slippery miracle to perform or celestial law to exploit. But there is at least this. The one problem with an available solution— the answer to 138 years of missing the sound and color and taste of Crowley. A century and a half of the sea or a garland of marigolds or a handful of grapes _almost_ filling the void in him, but always coming with a fresh ache in tow and an old emptiness in its wake.

Ever the problem-solver, Aziraphale sees a solution and reaches for it.

There’s a small inhale and exhale from Crowley’s silhouette. It’s difficult to tell if it’s a gasp and a sigh or just a huff of laughter with the screen between them, but the brine and the waves slowly recede and when he speaks again, the raw red has calmed to orange and brass.

“It’s good to see you, too.”

“I’ve… missed you. I’ve missed you quite a bit.”

A prickle of marigold passes through Aziraphale’s mouth, backed by a hint of oysters. He closes his eyes and allows himself a small smile in return.

“Missed you too, angel,” comes the quiet reply, an amber glow against the inside of his eyelids. He focuses on the color, wishing he could fasten it around his shoulders like a cloak. The unique hue that can almost—but never _quite_ —be found in the world around him. Too light to be tea, too dark to be a gemstone, too clear to be honey. It’s a warm color, motley and rippling like sunlight coiling through water.

“Where did you go?” Aziraphale asks, desperate to keep the amber flowing. “After Florence, I mean.”

“East. Then north. It was a proper challenge finding people _alive_ enough to wile, but I managed.” A shocking rush of seawater flows through Aziraphale at that. He wonders how much of the fourteenth century Crowley is burying between the lines, but his own memories of a plague-ravaged Constantinople surface and he doesn’t press it.

“Did you—” Crowley begins, then clears his throat. “Did you see Icarus?”

“I did,” Aziraphale says, smiling as the marigolds return to his mouth. “Both times. It took some doing, making sure I got properly timed assignments on Earth— I almost missed it in 1456, but… well. I found an angle to work to get me planetside on time.”

“‘Course you did,” comes the reply, amber ringed in pale saffron. “How’d you fudge the numbers on that one?”

“There was no _fudging_. I simply… attached myself to a retrial that was going to happen anyway.”

“A retrial? Satan’s balls, don’t tell me you got wrapped up in another Peter of Atroa while you were away.”

“What? No, of course not,” Aziraphale says, frowning against his closed eyes. “This one was actually all humanity’s doing. Joan of Arc. I had nothing to do with any of it, but it did provide a convenient excuse to nip down to Earth.”

There’s a brief stretch of silence before Crowley pipes up again, his voice shimmering with its warm amber light. “You tied your banner to _Joan of bloody Arc_ because you didn’t want to miss the comet?”

“Er— Yes?”

The puff of laughter that finds its way to Aziraphale is the rich, familiar gold that he’s come to know over the millennia— the color that he first heard on the wall of Eden and that hasn’t been far from his mind since. A persevering thread that has woven through his life, stitching together the eras and pulling the patchwork chapters of human history into a coherent story. It’s not the color that surprises him. The color, he knows.

What surprises him is the taste of grapes it brings with it.

His eyes shoot open and he stares at Crowley’s shadow through the screen as the familiar bittersweetness floods his mouth. Crowley who is most definitely several meters away and not even making eye contact with him, let alone physical contact. Crowley, who is somehow filling his mouth with the taste of _touch._

“Aziraphale?”

“Hmm?” he responds, not trusting himself to form intelligible words.

“Are you…” There’s a long pause then, in which Crowley’s breathing is heavy enough to hear through the screen. “Staying?”

“In… Barcelona?”

“On Earth.”

“Ah. Right. Yes.”

There’s a quick burst of flavor in Aziraphale’s mouth— marigolds, oysters, and grapes all at the same time. Wildly varied, but somehow a complementary chord. Then it settles back into just grapes. His heart clenches around the sensation as if to capture and hold it, adrenaline seeping through him like ink into water.

“I do plan on returning to Florence, though,” Aziraphale says. “I just need to form a report on the situation here.”

“You came from Florence?”

“Indeed. It’s recovered beautifully.”

“Wouldn’t know.”

“Crowley,” Aziraphale sighs. “You’re not accomplishing anything by being here. It all seems quite out of our hands, really. You don’t have to follow me back to Florence, but consider putting this one behind you.”

“Yeah, angel. Sure.”

The silence stretches for a very long time after that, but the grapes linger, bright and loud, in Aziraphale’s mouth through all of it.

* * *

** Florence - three months later **

A ‘pocket clock’, the clockmaker had called it. It’s a clunky thing—heavy, cylindrical, and certainly nothing that will comfortably fit in a pocket—but Aziraphale is taken with it nonetheless. The concept of _time_ , distilled into a gold and glittering masterwork of delicately filigreed metal, made with the intent of carrying it with you. Flourish and function brought together in a truly remarkable feat of human ingenuity.

Aziraphale is sitting on a bench beside the Arno, fiddling with the new device in the bright afternoon sun, when the taste of marigolds and grapes creeps into his mouth. Startled, his hands fall still in his lap. He looks up in time to see Crowley settling into the seat on his left.

“Hello, Crowley,” he says, tilting his head and frowning curiously at him. “Been in town long?”

“Aziraphale,” he says, nodding in greeting and turning his lopsided smile to Aziraphale. His face is somehow terribly expressive even from behind his dark lenses. “Only a few days. I had grand plans of hunting you down, but it turns out you’re easy to find.”

Aziraphale fights to keep a bubble of giddy laughter under the surface as the grapes dance over his tongue. _Well, this is new. Very new and most intriguing._


	17. Bring your flood to me

**Fermata,** _noun_ **.**  
(from the Italian word, _fermare_ , meaning ‘ _stop_ ’; colloquially: a ‘birdseye’)

A symbol of musical notation indicating a pause of unspecified length on a note or rest. Exactly how long a fermata is held is up to the discretion of the performer or conductor.

A fermata often signifies only the end of a musical phrase—rather than a movement—and that a breath is to be taken.

* * *

**Norwich - 1758**

“Just get them all, angel.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Aziraphale huffs, and continues sorting books into small piles while the bookseller looks on in dismay.

“You’ve been sorting this man’s books for an hour now. You obviously want them all.”

“I’m not _sorting_ ,” he says with a sniff, his voice creeping into steely stubbornness, “I’m _shopping_.”

“Whatever you say,” Crowley snorts, then raises an eyebrow when Aziraphale starts a fifth pile on the table. “You won’t hear _me_ complaining about keeping a shopkeep away from his family on Christmas night. Right demonic thing to do.”

“Oh dear,” Aziraphale murmurs, looking up at the man as though seeing him for the first time. He wrings his hands and looks back down at the books laid out across the table. “Oh… _bother_.”

“The _angelic_ thing to do would be to get them all,” Crowley says, crossing his arms and leaning against a bookshelf. “All that business you’d be giving him? And at the holidays too. Bloody charitable of you.”

“I see what you’re up to, you old serpent. You won’t tempt me to greed so easily.”

“It’s entirely self-serving, I assure you,” Crowley says, letting his head thump back against the shelf. When Aziraphale rolls his eyes at him, he sighs dramatically and groans, “I’m _bored_. When you said ‘a quick stop,’ I didn’t think you meant four hours in as many bookshops.”

Aziraphale shakes his head and stifles the smallest puff of jasmine before turning back to the books. “No one forced you to come, my dear. But you didn’t honestly think I’d visit a town with ten booksellers and not visit them, did you? Ten!” He selects a book from one of his piles and replaces it on the shelf, but pauses with his hand in the air, his attention momentarily captured by the titles next to it. With a small nod, he pulls down two books and returns to his piles.

“ _Angel_.”

“I’m almost done!”

“Just toss a coin!”

“And how do you propose I use a binary determinant for _five_ categories?”

“Throw out the worst pile and toss it twice. Simple.”

“‘ _Worst pile_ ’,” Aziraphale bristles, “as if I would make such a thing.”

Crowley shoves off the bookshelf and moves to examine the books spread across the table. “Show me what we’re working with before I discorporate from the tedium of it all.”

Aziraphale gives him a scoff that would sound far more irritated if it weren’t colored such a fanciful shade of blue, and begins walking him through the categories: poetry, philosophy, epistolary drama, and two piles for plays— tragedies and comedies.

“Alright, first throw out the tragedies,” Crowley says, grinning at the salty glare that earns him. “ _Or_ , if I can’t tempt you to leave with them all, then how about one from every category?”

Aziraphale’s face lights up with a rush of jasmine. “Oh, yes. All things in moderation, very sensible.”

After a few more minutes of methodically reexamining each pile, Aziraphale manages to select a book from each category, adding _Persian Letters_ as a sixth with the justification that it bridges the genres and therefore _must_ be considered on its own merit. Crowley waits for him to turn his back and take his selections to the shopkeeper before smiling and shaking his head.

Pushing the tragedies aside, he shuffles idly through the stack of comedies while Aziraphale wanders away to speak with the bookseller. His eyebrows shoot up at _The Golden Rump_ , pinch into a confused frown at _Volpone_ , then come to parade rest on _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_.

The cover of the book is rather plain looking—dark leather with no embellishments except for the title in slim gold calligraphy—but when Crowley reaches out and flips through the pages, vibrant illustrations jump out at him. Titania in her flowery bed, a gleeful Puck hovering behind a confounded Bottom, the lovers sleeping in a glade full of fairies—all of them created in stunning black linework.

Emotions spanning several centuries jumble in him as he runs his fingers over the drawings, one particular night crystallizing apart from the rest. He lets himself teeter on the edge of it for a moment before leaning into the memory, sending his thoughts floating back a century and a half, to a night in Sussex. To being high on the rush of twisting a curse into a bout of luck for a local politician. To Aziraphale following him into town even though doing so completely nulled the purpose of the Arrangement.

The angel had whirled into his awareness as an eddy of jasmine and color, stark against the dark corner of the tavern where he sat people watching, and started excitedly babbling about a _troupe_ just outside town. A company with an inside connection and a chance to see Shakespeare’s newest before anyone else, but they had to go _now_ , no dithering, no dallying, they would need to be in the Sussex Downs before the sun set.

So Crowley had followed. Of course he had. Aziraphale had long been prone to bouts of excitement and curiosity, but this seemed different somehow. He’d been positively _alight_ with it— sparkling in Crowley’s mind in hypnotic patterns of blue and silver, jasmine pulling at his heart like so many gossamer threads, the promise of apples hiding a mere glance away.

Crowley would have followed him anywhere.

Or in this case, to the grove of trees tucked into the hills just outside town, where the troupe of actors had parked their wagons in a semicircle to create a makeshift stage. They’d settled into the grass as the lanterns were lit, and just when the golden hour of twilight had settled across the downs, they began Shakespeare’s latest.

It had been a small crowd gathered— mostly just the families of the troupe and a few especially connected townsfolk, really more of a rehearsal than a full performance. But somehow, that made it even better, bringing a lightheartedness and sense of calm to the performance that Crowley had never experienced in a theatre. The actors slipping in and out of character, laughing and teasing each other as they tripped over lines, ad libbing jokes that would _never_ be acceptable in polite company.

The sun had set and the stars had started to appear by the time the play had meandered its way into the third act. Painted linen shades had been slipped around the lanterns to make them glitter like fairy lights in the gloom as the people dressed as fairies and sprites danced their way through the fantastical story.

It had been utterly enchanting. Riveting. Magically mundane. And all of it amplified by the jasmine and the periwinkle and the sweet tang of _apples_ that swirled around him.

Apples without touch. This new layer to an ancient love.

Crowley blinks down at the page and forces his mind back to the present. He flicks his eyes up to see Aziraphale looking over his shoulder at him, his brows drawn into a curious frown. On the tail of such a lush memory, it somehow feels akin to being caught in a terribly salacious act. Crowley fumbles for a distraction, reaching for _The Golden Rump_ and holding it up, his other hand flying to his chest as he opens his mouth in an exaggerated expression of shock.

It has the desired effect. Aziraphale sputters, flushes, and turns back to the bookseller. Once all eyes are off him, Crowley closes _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ and slips it into his coat pocket.

He’s breathing the faint smell of apples as they leave the shop when, more as an afterthought than anything, Crowley pulls a bit of luck out of the air and leaves it behind for the bookseller. In a few week’s time, the man will find the appropriate coinage for a copy of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ tucked behind the till. Completely coincidental and nothing he will think to connect to the irritating customers who kept him working late on Christmas, of course.

Crowley is still a demon, after all.

* * *

“So they finally figured it out,” Aziraphale says, lifting his face to the sky as they walk.

Crowley keeps his eyes focused in front of him. “Took them long enough,” he grunts, pulling his collar up around his neck

“Oh, come now, you can’t blame them for not figuring it out sooner,” Aziraphale says, his voice a rich blue and his breath puffing into the winter air in front of him as he speaks. “Honestly, it’s remarkable they managed it at all. Almost none of them get to see it more than once in their lifetimes.”

Crowley puffs out a weak laugh and shoves his hands into his coat pockets, curling his fingers around the book like a talisman. “And _yet_ , they’re naming it after a human. Seems a bit… uninspired, don’t you think?”

Aziraphale stifles a quick flash of periwinkle. “You do realize that _Icarus_ was a human, correct?”

“That’s completely different and you know it.”

Aziraphale just laughs under his breath again and shakes his head as he leads them down the path through the Chapelfield Gardens. There are a few small clusters of people in the park—lovers huddled together, parents with excited children, curious scholars and artists and even a few carolers—all drawn out to marvel at the comet. Crowley is suddenly struck by how little some things change over the course of the millennia. How if he were to simply add the smell of the sea and take the chill from the air, the scene would be almost indistinguishable from Ostia two thousand years ago.

“I think it’s rather commendable,” Aziraphale says. “Besides, it’s not like it’s hubris. Halley’s been dead some seventeen years now. They’re merely honoring the man who fit the final piece into place.”

“It’s not like it was some great puzzle,” Crowley says, kicking at a pebble. “Giant sodding comet flies by every seventy six years, right on schedule. Doesn’t take a genius.”

“Perhaps not, but how many of them get to live long enough to see it twice? One in a thousand? Five thousand? It doesn’t seem _entirely_ fair that its orbital period is a human lifespan.”

Crowley huffs out a nonverbal reply, then falls silent.

For the first time in decades, he lets his mind rest on Adrielle. He had never known her exact age, but he’d figured her to be at least ninety when she had passed. A truly extraordinary lifespan for a human in the fourteenth century— and Icarus had flown by sometime in the middle of it, giving her only one chance to see it. _Had_ she seen it? Perhaps it had been cloudy. Perhaps she had simply wanted an evening in with Grace and her paints that night and had been blissfully unaware of its presence. Or perhaps she had just been tired and slept right through it.

He hadn’t thought to ask her when she’d visited the lighthouse. When you try to catch up on an entire life in three days, the small stories and everyday things end up going unspoken, and he’d been too busy trying to read between her lines to spare a thought for Icarus. She had told him about her garden and her home and Grace, and he had gone to work filling in the gaps.

The mundane joy of a single perfect morning spent in the garden.

The sound that the door to your bedroom makes, and how it is entirely unique from the sound of any other door on the planet, deeply comforting in a way you can never _quite_ describe.

The singular feeling of belonging that comes from waking up beside someone you love.

_Who can blame them for not puzzling out the stars sooner, when there is so much to find on the ground?_

His thoughts drift to the sky as he watches the comet’s light glitter off the frosted field. To the stubborn and headstrong starmaker who had wanted more, and reached into the fire to get it, knowing it would burn him. Maybe it had been art and creation he had reached for, or maybe it had just been a want for the far more ordinary delights. Either way, the binary star had been so _important_ to him.

He had tried so many times to create his own after working on Alpha Centauri, failing each time and reshaping the mess into a nebula, until finally he pushed too hard. Whether out of pride or vanity or just simple arrogance, he had held the solidifying stars far past the point of failure, until they seared into his skin and he flung them away from himself in a fit of shock and rage.

It was the first time he had felt pain. The first time he had felt shame. The failed stars rocketed away from him as a comet and he never had a chance to add anything else to the sky; the chaos and the Fall happened shortly after Icarus was created.

It’s a bitter memory, but one that time has managed to give him a new view of. The distance between this moment and his crash landing, with all the eras of humanity blooming between them, is vast enough to make Joriel seem like an entirely different person. Crowley wasn’t even aware the canyon had been forming until this moment, when he looks back and realizes the terrain around him has changed.

He suddenly feels entirely unsure why his link to Icarus is even a secret at all.

Aziraphale doesn’t need to know all the horrible details of it; there are some things Crowley will never be able to talk about, but surely he deserves the basics. It seems almost childish to keep it from him— and not because he’s a magpie for knowledge. Not because Crowley _owes_ it to him, and not even because he’s the only other soul on the planet who can appreciate Icarus for what it is.

But because he’s Aziraphale. Because he’s Crowley’s known point on a dark coastline.

“I made it,” Crowley says, strangely calm as he lets his eyes drift across the gardens.

There’s a long stretch of silence from Aziraphale, made bearable by the smell of apples that surrounds him. A feeling like the weight of sunlight on his face, in spite of the cold night air.

“My dear, I know,” he finally says, very softly. “Or, I’ve _assumed_ , anyway. I would have to be quite blind indeed not to see your connection with it,” he continues, when Crowley frowns and turns to stare at him.

“When…”

Aziraphale adds a hint of jasmine to the apples in the air. “Bithynia. _Terribly_ bright that time around.”

“Long time to keep that under your hat.”

“You should talk,” Aziraphale says, nodding up at the sky. Crowley makes a _pfff_ sound, but Aziraphale continues before he can form a real retort. “At any rate, I only ever wanted to know as much as you wanted to tell me.”

“Oh really, chronicler?” Crowley says with a grin. “I seem to recall quite a _lot_ of questions.”

“You know perfectly well what I mean. And I stopped questioning you after—”

“Kidding, angel. Kidding.”

Aziraphale sniffs and lifts his chin, shifting the package of books awkwardly in his arms.

“What about a bookshop?” Crowley says, running his thumb along the spine of the book in his pocket.

“What _about_ a bookshop?”

“Of your own, I mean,” he shrugs.

“What on Earth brought this on?”

“Well for one, you already have a bloody dragon’s hoard of books,” he says. “A bookshop would give you an actual earthly place to put all the earthly _things_ you can’t seem to stop accumulating.”

“If you’re referring to the books of prophecy—”

“I was _referring_ to your collection of misprinted bibles,” Crowley interrupts with a laugh, “but you’re proving my point.”

“They’re fascinating,” Aziraphale sniffs defensively. “The way a few words can change the meaning of an entire book? The ripples that—”

“Yes yes, I get it. I do,” Crowley says before Aziraphale can get swept away in a poetic lecture about the power of words. “But also consider that it might just be nice to have someplace to hang your hat.”

Aziraphale slips into silence as they wind their way through the park, piping up again once they reach the cobbled streets, though the conversation has strayed back into familiar territory. Gentle teasing over the titles in Aziraphale’s arms, fond reminiscing about bygone eras, and a spirited debate over where _exactly_ the point lies where a blessing becomes a wile.

The apples that hang heavily in the air the whole time, however, tell Crowley that the matter has wrapped itself pleasantly and securely around Aziraphale’s mind.

* * *

**London - seventy six years later**

There is no one moment when a place stops being simply _a place to hang your hat_ and starts being _a place where your hat belongs._ It’s a phenomenon that builds slowly and carefully, until a day comes that is different from every day before it, but in the most miniscule ways— a smell or the lay of the shadows or the depth of a sound as it echoes through an old space in a new way. A day when you open your eyes to realize that the shape of your world has changed. That where there was once a dusty shell of a building on a corner in Soho, there is now a bookshop. The dust is still there, and though it may be a bafflingly cluttered and inaccessible place to most outsiders, it is well loved and perfectly suited to one (sometimes two) man-shaped being(s).

It’s the second time Aziraphale has taken a physical location and folded it around himself like a quilt, and though he may not remember the first, the method is nearly identical.

For Aziraphale, it starts with walking the perimeter of the rooms shortly after signing the papers. But instead of trailing his hands along the rough bark of the apple trees, he gently drags his fingers along the shelves, leaving lazy trails in the dust. Where once he observed the physical properties of hyacinths and apples, he now installs a merry bell above the front door to announce each visitor with a tinkle of brass. What had been a careful exploration of his imagination becomes hiding small treasures in the shelves and slowly walling them in with hefty tomes. A sense of home and love and belonging in a wild garden gives way to a desk and a globe and a kettle to keep in the back room.

The dance is the same, though the music is slightly different.

Things progress piecewise from there— a carved maquizcóatl is perched above the second floor balcony like a watchful sentry over the texts on the ground floor. The chill of hardwood floors is absorbed by a patchwork of rugs. A highly unique and very powerful kind of love is poured into the shelves as he settles into an ever-changing organization system that involves such categories as ‘ _books that are best enjoyed on Tuesdays_ ’ and ‘ _books that make me think of grapes_ ’ rather than any discernible genre.

Other things happen more slowly.

Ever drawn into an orbit with Aziraphale, Crowley drifts in and out of the bookshop, pulling it around himself in a different way. He finds this space fits around him like a favorite jacket or a well tailored glove— warm, practical, and protective. And while it may not be where _his_ hat belongs, it’s where Aziraphale belongs, and somehow, that feels like enough.

For Crowley, it starts with a sofa. Some length of time after the bookshop starts feeling like home but before Icarus passes Earth again, Aziraphale acquires a sofa and installs it beside his desk. It’s not a sofa for him— he’s perfectly happy with his desk and his chair, thank you very much. It’s an invitation, a request, a silent way to say _please stay, make yourself comfortable, I’ll be right beside you should you need me._

The week Aziraphale moves the sofa into the shop, Crowley brings over the copy of _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_ that he definitely-did-not-purchase in Norwich, a specific page dog-eared in a way that would curdle Aziraphale’s blood if he knew about it. But Aziraphale doesn’t know about it, because the book is not a gift. It’s not even a grand gesture— not exactly.

Crowley isn’t sure _exactly_ why he hides the book in the loose floorboard under the sofa. It just feels like the right thing to do, and he has always been one to let his heart guide him. Placing this cherished memory, a memory that belongs to both of them, inside the place that Aziraphale has so lovingly tended to and invited him into simply feels like the proper way of things. An inherent truth of the world. Flowers die on the vine in autumn to be reborn in spring, Aziraphale’s presence is a splash of color and the floral scents of a wild garden, Icarus soars by Earth every seventy six years— and a certain magical memory of fairy lights in the South Downs belongs in the foundation of Aziraphale’s bookshop.

* * *

Crowley is thinking of lighthouses and hidden treasures as he listens to Aziraphale talk about his newest methods of repelling customers. They’re on the roof of the bookshop, Aziraphale perched on the parapet with his back to the street as his hands move in animated gestures to match his speech, Crowley seated on the flat rooftop and leaning against the chimney with one leg stretched out in front of him.

They’ve been up here since the sun exited the stage to make room for Icarus’ dramatic scene, though neither of them lift their eyes to watch. Instead they pass a bottle back and forth as the comet shines off the shale of the rooftop and into the glass that moves between their hands. Hands that are ever wary of touch, now that the vines and the boughs have grown beyond their fingertips.

So they share the spirits and they do not touch as they talk about everything and nothing in such a way that only several thousand years of witnessing life can allow.

Endless yet affectionate bickering over Kant, the newest culinary curiosities, and the value or lack thereof of pocket watches and delicate silver snuff boxes take the forefront, wrapped in blue and orange, jasmine and marigold, sapphire and amber. Plagues, wars, centuries of separation and heart-shattering loss— are all reduced to a lingering look, salt on the breeze, and silent echoes of a forgotten orchard by the necessity of _carrying on_.

It’s simple and quiet, this Understanding they’ve settled into, sitting on the crossroads between Heaven and Hell, humanity and chaos. It’s the stillness at the center. A buoy, anchored and marking the way through treacherous waters. Small and unassuming at first glance, terribly important to the few who navigate by it, and vital when the storm surges just so.

When you live long enough to see your world end and recover a few times, you learn to give weight to the small things.

* * *

Some would say the story ends here. They wouldn’t be wrong, not exactly. It’s quite a pleasant ending to a story with a turbulent middle and too many fraught beginnings. A home, some peace, and a love that does not need to be spoken or touched to be understood.

It’s an ending, certainly. But that’s the thing about endings, isn’t it?

This ending is not theirs. And it is not mine.

* * *

_“My soul is in the sky._  
_Tongue, lose thy light._  
_Moon, take thy flight.”_

-William Shakespeare, _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Additional inspiration for this chapter was taken from Sandman #19, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" by Neil Gaiman. The image of magic bleeding into reality through the power of telling stories is one I've never been able to get out of my mind.


	18. Under a sky no one else sees

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Halley's comet fills me with a very peculiar kind of melancholy. Playing [this song](https://listen.takenobumusic.com/track/a-heros-welcome) on repeat carried me through this chapter. (truly... last.fm informs me I've listened to this song *squints* 159 times in the past *squints harder* four days)

**Kerning,** _verb_ **.**

The typographic process of removing space between characters, improving spacing and fit in order to achieve a visually pleasing result.

Unlike letter-spacing, which adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters, kerning tailors the space between each unique letter pair.

* * *

**London - 1910**

“Well, old friend,” Aziraphale mutters, staring miserably at the sky, “have a nice trip around Neptune.”

He had spent the past few weeks half expecting Crowley to come strolling into the bookshop as though nothing had happened, the very embodiment of studied nonchalance, trailing marigolds and grapevines in his wake. Or perhaps to feel the thread between them go taut, Crowley’s sea calling to him and pulling him in— Icarus had been especially bright this time around, after all. The brightest he could recall since Bithynia.

At the very least, he had expected to sense _something_. Some whisper of salt or flash of color in the edge of his vision.

But the comet’s brightness has faded from what it was a week ago, now that it’s past its perihelion and careening away from Earth, and the world had remained colorless and silent throughout its whole visit, save for the occasional jingle from the brass bell above the door that he had made a point to leave unlocked.

“You understand, don’t you? Holy water— _honestly_. How could he expect— After everything—”

He sighs and drops his gaze to the bookshop roof, kicking absently at a loose tile for a moment before lifting his head to glare at Icarus again. “The _one thing_ that could take him from me. One clumsy spill and— gone. _Gone_ gone. Not just discorporation, or a century spent faffing about with paperwork, but _destroyed_.”

 _How_ dare _he. The one place I can’t follow._

He feels a bubble of anger rise in him as he frowns at the sky. “He might as well threaten to extinguish the sun! _Snuff out all life on the planet!_ ” Aziraphale snaps, letting his tone slip towards mockery as he parrots the newspaper in his lap. With an irritated scoff, he tosses it aside.

The fear mongering surrounding Icarus this time around had been startling, though in hindsight, he supposes it shouldn’t have been. Humans had advanced technologically enough to photograph the comet, and combined with an especially bright approach, it had made for very impressive images indeed. The comet had even come close enough for Earth to pass through its tail, allowing scientists to collect data about it while keeping their feet firmly on the ground.

It all should have been wondrous and thrilling. For some, it was. But as is often the way with dramatic surges of knowledge and innovation, there had also been panic and those who exploited panic. It had all seemed like the exact sort of chaotic chain reaction Crowley would have sent in a memo and claimed credit for.

Aziraphale finds himself picturing the scene— Crowley leaning against the chimney where he had sat last time Icarus visited, sowing marigolds into the space between them, holding up the ridiculous headlines and explaining how ‘ _humans are going to be twats with or without my help, I might as well cash in on it_ ’ in a voice full of complicated sunset hues. Grapes would join the flowers, perhaps a glimmer of gold as well, glinting off the old threads that now twist around both of them like vines.

As quickly as the anger had flared, he feels it fall flat. “I can’t lose him, Icarus. I _cannot_.” His voice sounds small. Scared and desperate.

_I don’t know how to read a world that doesn’t have him in it._

He tries to imagine a place where marigolds are confined to flowerbeds, where grapes are commonplace and the strength of the sea is left at the coastline. A wave of panic approaches him at the thought of the love anchored at the center of him—the one constant in a six thousand year existence—suddenly sinking beneath the waterline.

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath, forcing calm over his mind on the exhale.

_Right. Nothing for it. Crowley is going to do what Crowley is going to do and it’s not my place to try and control him. This friendship would not have survived the millennia if that were the case._

When he opens his eyes again, they land on the newspaper. There’s a familiar shift at his center, like a muscle tensing reflexively. _Perhaps not_ nothing _for it…_

With a decisive nod and a last glance at Icarus, he gathers up the paper and heads inside. After making sure the door is locked, Aziraphale comes to rest at his desk. He settles into his chair, flexes his hands in front of him a few times, and selects a blank sheet of parchment.

Then he begins to write.

* * *

**London - 1986**

He tastes oysters moments before the bell over the door rings. The bookshop isn’t technically open, and Aziraphale is sure he’d locked the door, but lately, the lock doesn’t seem to acknowledge Crowley.

“Oi! Angel!” Crowley calls, billowing into the shop as a swirl of agitated rust and salt.

Aziraphale leans back in his desk chair and aims his voice through the stacks. “Make sure it’s locked behind you, won’t you?”

“It’s nine p.m.” Crowley says flatly, stalking over to the sofa and collapsing onto it in a boneless tangle of limbs. “Who in Satan’s name are you expecting in a bookshop at nine p.m.?”

“ _You’re_ here.”

“Since when do I get lumped in with customers?”

“Since you became one of my surest means of getting them out of my shop,” Aziraphale says with the smallest smile, keeping his eyes on the books spread across his desk. “What are you here for then?”

He knows Crowley is here because of Icarus, but his mood regarding the comet has never been easy to predict. He’d seemed somewhat more at ease with it in recent centuries, but the complete radio silence on its last pass by the planet had been a surprise, especially given how bright it had been. Aziraphale settles into letting Crowley be the one to steer the conversation through these particular waters.

There’s a grunt from the sofa, a sound wrapped in saffron and rust, trying to edge its way into red. _Lighthearted, curious, and… sad?_ “Last chance, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale lifts his head and blinks, then turns to see Crowley holding up a pair of binoculars. “Not… for us it isn’t,” he says slowly.

“You know what I mean. This time around.”

Aziraphale hums thoughtfully, his eyes fixed on the binoculars. Then he claps his hands on his thighs and pushes his chair back. “Very well, then. Wine or whiskey tonight?”

There’s a beat of silence, in which Aziraphale feels a wave swell, crest, and disperse. “Tea, I think,” says Crowley.

_That’s new._

“Tea it is.”

He gets to his feet and makes his way to the backroom, putting his back to Crowley in hopes of hiding his bewilderment. As he boils water, he tries to think of a single time when Crowley had chosen tea over whiskey, but comes up short. The _binoculars_ aren’t helping with his confusion either; he can’t recall a single time in the past two thousand years when Crowley had been eager to see Icarus. Seeking out Aziraphale’s company when the comet passed had always seemed more like a need for a distraction than anything. A want for solace. A known point to focus on so as to _not_ look at the sky.

Oysters and brine are still a presence in his mouth when he tucks a thermos under his arm and makes his way back to his desk, but they’re muted— the softest backdrop to Crowley’s mood. The tsunami that had crashed into him in Athens and the maelstrom that had engulfed him in Bithynia seem impossibly distant, here in the gentle calm of the bookshop. A subtle prickle of marigolds occasionally drifts across the still surface of the sea, and Aziraphale focuses on it with interest as he leads the way to the roof.

“So what brought this on?” Aziraphale asks, settling onto his usual perch on the parapet.

Crowley leans against the chimney and fiddles with the binoculars in his lap. “What brought _what_ on?”

“The binoculars, for one.”

“Can’t very well see it without them,” Crowley says, his voice is still painted in curious shades of whimsical melancholy.

Aziraphale hums and turns his face to the sky. “It really was quite dim this time around.”

“Bloody invisible, is what it is,” Crowley huffs. He moves his glasses to the top of his head and raises the binoculars to his eyes, pointing them heavenward. “Did you catch even a glimmer of it?”

“No, but I haven’t been outside of London. The city lights do make it more difficult to see the comet.”

“Among other things,” Crowley grumbles, turning the dial on the binoculars and pointing them to a new quadrant of the night sky. “You know I don’t think it’s ever been _this_ far away.”

Aziraphale thinks of the newspaper article tucked away in his desk downstairs. The highly scientific breakdown of ‘ _distance from Earth_ ’ and ‘ _light pollution_ ’ and ‘ _positioning of the comet relative to the sun_ ’. All the myriad factors, laid out in impassive black and white, that fell into place _just so_ , making Icarus invisible to the majority of the planet.

He smiles wistfully as he watches Crowley scan the skies, imagining him a sailor who has spent a lifetime preparing for a journey, only to have the winds die at the last minute.

Aziraphale clears his throat softly and moves from his seat on the wall to sit cross-legged on the roof, facing Crowley with his back against the wall. He briefly considers asking if Crowley had sought out Icarus in 1910 as he unscrews the thermos and pours the tea into the plastic cup, but decides better of it.

“You know,” he says instead, “we’ll pass through the Eta Aquariids pass next month. And the Orionids in October.”

Crowley lowers the binoculars and quirks an eyebrow at him.

“Icarus’ meteors,” Aziraphale says with a small shrug, blowing on the tea. “A chance to see a piece of the old rascal without having to wait seventy six years.” He takes a small sip, then holds the cup out to Crowley. “If you like,” he adds.

Crowley’s other eyebrow travels up his forehead. He lets out a small golden breath, then sets the binoculars aside and accepts the cup. Their fingers are just shy of touching, but the taste of grapes passes through Aziraphale’s mouth regardless.

“Yeah, alright,” Crowley says, his voice settling into its rich amber lilt. He lifts the cup in front of him with both hands and breathes in the steam. “Next month then.”

* * *

**London - 2008**

The bookshop is empty, but the word _godfathers_ is still ringing in Aziraphale’s ears and the handshake is still tingling in his fingers. He checks the lock on the door, traces his beaten path through the shelves, and settles at his desk.

With ritualistic proficiency, he reaches into the drawer and pulls out an envelope. It is an old, well-handled thing, made from heavy parchment, but showing obvious signs of wear. The corners have become blunt over the years and the seam where the envelope folds itself shut has been opened so many times that it is almost nonexistent, the paper nearing the consistency of linen.

Like everything in the bookshop, it is seasoned, broken in, thoroughly considered and appreciated from every angle. In a word: loved.

It’s quite a _full_ envelope. There is a small bundle of newspaper clippings that run the gamut of advertisements for ‘comet pills’ to warnings about the end of the world, a few dried and pressed marigolds separating the sheets of newsprint, photographs of Icarus from the ground in 1910 and from space in 1986.

It also contains a letter.

The letter that Aziraphale smooths on the desk in front of him is a similar artifact to its envelope. The parchment is old— yellowing at the edges and, in spite of the slow delicacy used in touching it, the creases have begun to take on a feathery softness.

At first glance, this letter would seem as simple as that. Just a letter.

A closer look would reveal that it is a love letter— Aziraphale’s heart examined and organized and poured onto a page in neat, flowing script. It is both of these things, and if that were all one were to take away from a study of this letter, it would still be a wonderful treasure. A love that is deep, unconditional, and very, _very_ old.

But a third look—a look between the lines and in the margins, an in-depth consideration of the color and consistency of the ink, a study of which words are deliberately crossed out and which mistakes have been left in full view—would tell a second story. One that has learned to be slow and careful, ever mindful of what is said and what is held back. But always, it is honest.

It’s one letter, but it’s also _many_ letters. It’s the letter Aziraphale wrote in 1910 that started with _Dear Crowley_. It’s also the amendments made in 1941 which, among other things, added _My_ to the opening line, made apparent only by the slightly different tint to the ink. It’s the small, cramped addition of three characters in 1986 that changed the opening line a third time.

It’s the cascading postscripts at the bottom of the page that refuse to let the letter end.

It’s the story told by the single drop of ink, accidentally spilled on a corner of the page in 1967, which sent miniscule tendrils of color tangling through the fibers of the paper. It’s how the word _Dearest_ is ever so slightly smudged from the affectionate swipe of a thumb every time the letter is smoothed open, as though greeting an old friend. It’s the path forged as the handwriting changes subtly over the course of the letter, the neat and careful print slowly relaxing into something looser and softer, flowing over the page like water.

Because this letter is also a map. A map of where they’ve been, but also where they are, lovingly updated each time the terrain changes.

Aziraphale thinks he might give it to Crowley someday, if the landscape they find themselves in is one that would benefit from such a map. Or their story may not be one that ever gets carved into this shape, which Aziraphale thinks would also be perfectly fine. Either way, for now, he is content to continue recording their story.

* * *

_My Dearest Crowley,_

_I used to think time was our curse— the one thing in this world we have an endless supply of, but the one thing that means nothing to us. The two of us, forever fixed, as humanity builds, thrives, and grows around us. You and I, separated by duty and ~~ineffability~~ purpose and the firmament, held at a planet’s distance at all times._

_But that’s the thing about time, is it not? It finds a way to soften even the sharpest edges._

_And that’s the singular oddity of this planet of ours. It’s always been the seam between us— the thread that binds us together, never that which separates us. I simply required the lens of time to see it clearly._

_Over the ages, I have sometimes pictured us as sitting on an island, the tides of an endless ocean ebbing and flowing against its bank, a pocket of perennial stillness at the center of an ever-shifting seascape. A place of deepest peace. Other times, I see this orbit we’ve fallen into as a dance, a unique harmony blooming between us as I shadow your movements or you fall into step with mine. Both of us singing our own answer to the call of the world’s symphony, creating a chord that is wholly ours._

_Occasionally—and I do hope you will ~~forgive~~ indulge the sentimentality—I will go so far as to imagine the two of us as a comet. Travellers on a set path, visiting the same sights eternally but never tiring of them. Once a human lifetime or so, we open our eyes and take in the new shape of the world, before letting the current carry us away again._

_But always—whether I entertain daydreams of the island, the dance, or the comet—it’s us. It’s you. I ~~will~~ accept many tellings of this story, but I can’t imagine a version that doesn’t include you._

_Because you are the one thing in this world that I know with absolute certainty I have chosen._

_As Earth would have it, there is nowhere that does not hold an echo of you. Even in your absence, you are the sunset reflecting off the sea, the embers at the heart of every fire, the oxygen that claims iron for its own. Your fight and your fury and your questions twist through the seas. Your ~~de~~ light and your wonder and the answer to everything blooms in the marigolds. Your song resonates out of every vine in every garden. _

_That’s always been the heart of it. ~~Y~~ ou **r** ~~are the~~ song at the center of everything. _

_It took six thousand years of slowly ebbing and flowing, dancing and swaying, falling and getting up again to realize, but I can say now, with great certainty, that time has never been our curse. It has always been our gift._

_Yours,_

_Aziraphale_

_(1941) P.S. It has come to my attention that this letter has spent quite a lot of ink making a point without ever explicitly stating it. In case there is any doubt left in you, let me state it plainly: I love you. Enthusiastically, effortlessly, entirely. Anthony J. Crowley, I love all of you with all of me._

_(1967) P.P.S. I trust you._

_(1986) P.P.P.S. I thought our story was tied to Icarus this whole time, but perhaps, instead, we’ve been reading between the lines. Tracing the memories and whims of the comet instead of the comet itself. Telling our story from Earth as it trails in the comet’s wake, relishing in the smaller, quieter moments from our still point on the turning world. Our story has always been shared with Earth, after all._

_(2008) P.P.P.P.S. I used to believe that the truest, purest love would be absolutely free of fear. That to fear was some grave misstep. Some shameful fault._

_I see now that to live completely without fear is to callous one’s heart. Fear—much like joy or devotion or righteous anger—has its purpose. It gives us a reason to keep moving forward. The thought of losing you, losing this world, losing our home, fills me with fear, and that fear has stirred my blood like little else ever has._

_I don’t know how much we will be able to tip the scales, but I’m prepared to follow this fear to its end, rather than let it hold me back._

_( ) P.P.P.P.P.S._


	19. The architecture of the soul

**Terroir** , _noun_ **.**  
(from the French word, _terre._ Literally translated: ‘ _Earth_ ’)

The environmental conditions—especially soil, climate, and terrain—in which grapes are grown and that gives a wine its unique flavor and aroma.

Terroir is a sense of place— the idea that a final product will reflect the myriad unique factors that went into its creation.

* * *

**Somewhere between Tadfield and London - 2019**

At the end of it all, it hadn’t been discorporation that hurt the most. It hadn’t been the sting of Heaven’s cold refusal to save the world, or the realization that his six thousand year existence had been something of a sham in the eyes of his superiors, or holding the flaming sword again— _his_ flaming sword, the physical reminder of his failure as a principality. It hadn’t even been seeing the red underbelly of Crowley’s tearful ‘ _I lost my best friend_ ,’ (though that one _did_ feel a bit like heartbreak).

It had been looking Crowley full in the face—Crowley, who despite all reason or logic or sense, had just offered Aziraphale his hand for the third time in less than two days—and forcing himself to say, “ _I don’t think my side would like that._ ” It had been tasting the oysters and salt, seeing the red and the rust flaking around Crowley’s words as he had explained that they didn’t have sides anymore, watching the stillness that had fallen across his features.

It had been knowing _exactly_ how to chart the entire depth of that feeling.

And after the end of it all, the biggest relief hadn’t been being returned to his own body. It hadn’t been telling the quartermaster he had no intention of fighting in the war, or outsmarting Gabriel, or even Adam standing up to his father and saving the world (though that one especially felt like a weight off his mind).

It had been sliding into the bus seat beside Crowley, their thighs almost-but-not-quite touching, and tasting the faintest suggestion of grapes. It had been sitting beside Crowley as the bus trundled out of Tadfield, feeling the gentle nudge of grapes like a question or maybe just a reminder. A tangible token of the fact that Crowley _cared_. That he would always care.

That if this was all they were to be, it was good and it was theirs and it was _enough_.

It’s realizing all of this as he examines an old fear, and feeling it click together in his mind with, _we could also, finally, be_ more _, if we wanted_. It hits him like the sea colliding with a cliff face– the wave that finally manages to release the internal pressure holding together millennia of erosion and carve him into a new shape.

Halfway to London, Aziraphale feels his mind change.

* * *

“Get you anything?” Crowley says, closing the door behind them. His voice is a surprisingly neutral orange. No flavors accompany his mood. If anything, he’s placid.

Aziraphale stands in the entryway for a moment, trying to find a way to hold the _lack_ of sensation. The past week had been a blur of red and rust and brass, choking on salt and brine interspersed with hopeful flashes of grapes, images of the vineyard, occasional hints of marigold. Standing in the cool dimness of Crowley’s flat, especially after an hour of grapes and hushed amber on the bus, Aziraphale is overwhelmed by how much _nothing_ he senses here. The walls are a bare slate grey and the air has a flat, sterile quality to it that simply feels like _absence_.

“Er— Tea, I think. If you have it.”

“‘Course I have tea,” Crowley replies, the orange in his voice lightening almost imperceptibly. The color of it feels especially shocking here, set against this place that strives to embody such a lack of color. “Mind how you go,” he says as he leads the way down the hall. “I had some, uh… visitors earlier and haven’t cleaned up the mess yet.”

Aziraphale follows him down the granite tunnel of a hallway, pausing at the first juncture. A sudden verdant splash of green on his left, a faint smell of soil and greenery trying to find purchase in the empty air, a statue at the far end depicting what appears to be a tangle of wings and limbs. He knits his brows together at the strange sight and turns to his right, giving his head a small shake. A puddle of distinctly holy water and something far more caustic in the doorway, the floor strewn with glossy pictures of stars and nebulae, a throne and an altar which could only be described as a ‘chair’ and a ‘desk’ by one with a very active imagination. And, at the far end of the room— a lectern shaped like an eagle.

Aziraphale’s feet put down roots as he stands and stares, his thoughts whirring and stalling on the night in the church.

_What does the J stand for?_

_It’s just a J really._

“Angel?” Crowley’s voice floats around him, dark orange and in control. “You alright?”

_Little demonic miracle of my own. Lift home?_

Aziraphale looks up to see him at the end of the hall, turned to face him and staring across the grey stretch of space at him. “Hmm? Oh. Yes. Perfectly,” he says, his eyes drifting back to the lectern.

_What does the J stand for?_

“Because you look a little dazed.”

_The letter. The letter was in the bookshop…_

“It’s just… been a long day.”

_A long week. A long eleven years. A long six thousand._

There’s a quick tingle of marigolds and a misting of the sea. So quick Aziraphale almost misses it. By the time he glances over at Crowley, the sad smile he had tasted has already faded.

“Yeah,” Crowley says softly. Anything that might have been on the surface is firmly tucked away beneath the steady burnt orange of his voice. “Yeah, it has. Tea’s this way.”

Aziraphale shakes his head again, harder this time, as though the questions and the déjà vu and the lack of color were things he could shed if he simply put his mind to it.

 _Tea. Sit and breathe and have some tea._ He pulls a quick miracle out of the air, not bothering to care what head office might think about it, and vanishes the mess in the doorway before falling back into step behind Crowley. _After everything else, I am_ not _losing him to a clumsy misstep._

The kitchen, much like the entryway, feels like a void. Cool, colorless, and unlived in. Aziraphale perches on a stool, putting the kitchen counter between them, and takes a moment to wonder if the tea Crowley hands him is the first thing he’s ever prepared in this kitchen. He wraps his hands around the mug, focusing on the heat seeping into his palms, the swirl of bergamot steam, the rich amber color of the liquid. Finding he needs to _feel_ something, but so much of what he feels right now is wrapped up in Crowley.

Crowley, who, except for a fleeting burst of orange when he speaks, has fallen into shades of grey.

“You’re not having anything?” Aziraphale says, lifting his eyes from his tea.

“Nah,” Crowley says, leaning forward and propping himself bonelessly against the counter. “Tea doesn’t really… comfort me in the same way it does you.”

 _What_ does _comfort you then? The plants? The star charts? What is there of comfort in this place? You helped me turn the bookshop into a home, but there’s none of that here._

“Crowley, what do—” Aziraphale lets the sentence hang in the air and dissipate unfinished. He sighs and sips his tea, the familiar taste settling his mind a bit. Crowley just stares from behind his glasses, unsettlingly still. “What do you think we should do next?” he manages.

Crowley lets out a breath in a whoosh. “Want to consider the meaning of life while we’re at it?”

“I’m serious. I do think we should at least consider it, even if we resign ourselves to whatever fate—”

“Bugger _that_ ,” he interrupts with a scoff.

“Well then, I’m more than open for ideas,” Aziraphale says, frowning slightly.

Crowley pinches the bridge of his nose, then pulls his glasses of completely and scrubs at his face with both hands, the glasses hanging between his fingers by the stem. It’s a movement that seems both at ease and defeated. Comfortable enough with Aziraphale to let his walls come down a little, but what’s behind the wall is exhaustion. When he moves to replace his glasses, Aziraphale catches a glimpse of yellow—a color that’s almost saffron, almost amber, almost gold—and feels a hopeful swoop in his stomach at the sight.

Aziraphale leans across the counter, lifting his hands to Crowley’s temples, catching the sides of the lenses before they can be rebalanced over his eyes. Crowley falls very still, staring at him with wide eyes. Their fingers are, as always, just shy of touching, but Aziraphale tastes a faint splash of grapes. The first hint of it since the bus.

“Would you mind terribly…” Aziraphale says, as slowly and evenly as he can manage. Crowley gives his head a quick shake and Aziraphale lowers the glasses to the counter between them.

_Where did you go? We stepped inside this flat and you disappeared._

“It’s just that— Well—” Aziraphale frowns and focuses on the bright yellow of Crowley’s eyes, trying to find the right words. _Like fireflies, like marigolds, like candlelight. Gold and topaz and amber and—_ “It’s so _quiet_ in here. Without— Oh dear, it’s hard to explain.”

Crowley stares at him owlishly as he bumbles around an explanation.

“It’s just that it’s very colorless, and you—” Aziraphale tries again. “Your eyes are… a solace.”

“Color,” Crowley says faintly, the orange in his voice creeping towards amber.

_Like tea and honey and caramel. Sunlight reflecting off the sea and fairy lights outside Sussex and—_

“ _Yes_ , Crowley. Color.” The week’s events settle heavily on him once more as he stares at Crowley, clinging desperately to any scrap of color he can find. Trying to talk his way around it suddenly feels far too exhausting, too _pointless_ , especially when _our own side_ is echoing in his head. “It’s going to sound ridiculous, but you are sometimes a color. You _sound_ like a color.”

For a long, unmoving stretch of grey silence, Crowley stares at him with an unnerving stillness. When he speaks again, his voice is painted in rich amber and brass. Aziraphale sinks into it like a feather bed.

“What color, angel?”

“It depends,” Aziraphale says, releasing a relieved exhale that is somewhere between a giggle and a sigh. “Right now? It’s a bit brassy. Like honey.”

“ _Honey_?” Crowley says with a shocking burst of gold and grapes. “I sound like _honey_?”

“Mm-hmm,” Aziraphale says, a dreamy smile settling on his face before he can stop it. “Or gold, just now. Usually though, you’re, um… orange.”

Crowley blinks. “Blue.”

“What? No, not at all. As far from blue as—”

“ _You_. You’re blue.”

Aziraphale’s smile fades as his mouth falls slightly open and his mind starts to race. Somehow, in six thousand years, it had never occurred to him that the sensation might go both ways. It seems absurd now—laughable even—as he rapidly rewrites millennia of history to include this revelation, that he ever managed to convince himself otherwise. The mental gymnastics, the countless flawed arguments he had come up with, the tens of thousands of times he’d used the word _coincidence_ , to explain it away.

Marigolds had always been an _inherent temptation_ , one that he had almost convinced himself he was immune to. Drowning in Crowley’s sea in Florence had been _stress from the plague_. The touch in Rome grabbing him by the heart and wrenching him into a dreamscape had been _a matter of demonic biology_. The thread between them in Barcelona and Bithynia reeling him in from across the city had been _supernatural attunement_.

And the colors— those had long since become just part of the world. Part of _Crowley_. A flair for the dramatic, dark glasses, terrible taste in music— and a chromatic voice.

Aziraphale moves his hand from his mug to the space between them, resting it palm up on the counter. “And this?”

Crowley swallows and gives a small nod. “It’s, uh— Sort of like—” A complicated play of emotions dances across his face as his words deconstruct into stammers, followed by a string of sounds that would be entirely incoherent if not for the deep amber color they radiate. He sighs and falls silent, lifting his hand into the space above Aziraphale’s, their palms just shy of touching. He flexes his fingers.

“It’s sort of like an orchard,” he says, dropping the pad of one finger to the pulsepoint on Aziraphale’s wrist.

Aziraphale’s breath catches as the grapes flow through his mouth and images of the vineyard shimmer into his mind, impossibly bright against the grey of the kitchen. Bittersweet tannins, hazy purples and reds and greens in the edges of his vision, the faint woody smells of old vines and fresh earth. And the _touch_ at his wrist— an electrifying sensation the demands all of his attention.

He twitches his fingers up to connect with the base of Crowley’s palm. “I’ve always thought of it as a vineyard.”

Crowley’s eyelids flicker, but he doesn’t blink. He adds to the touch, curving his fingers around the side of Aziraphale’s thumb as nimble as a harpist and as soft as a summer breeze. “Could be both, I suppose.”

It’s a strange thing, touching deliberately, but with no real intent, for the first time in six thousand years. Touching purely because you _can_. Because you want to. Because you’ve _always_ wanted to. It’s putting down a burden that you’ve been carrying for so long, you’ve come to think of it as an extension of yourself.

When Crowley’s fingers curl around Aziraphale’s hand, thumb gently stroking up the inside of his palm, he feels the breaking dam that he expected in Constantinople, the dream realm he tripped into in Rome, the comfortable home he popped in on in a churchyard in Brittany— all of them converging at once on this still moment of want in a quiet and colorless kitchen.

It’s when he feels the warm spark under his fingertips, the old and familiar feeling of the thread between them, but drawn close and trying to tangle together, that the thought crashes into him like a sea storm.

_It’s nothing either side can trace. It’s ours. It’s ours and we’ve been honing it for six thousand years._

_Playing with fire._

“Fire,” he says, pulling his hand back abruptly. “Crowley, _hellfire_.”

Crowley jumps, as though yanked back from the edge of a dream just before drifting asleep. “ _Christ_ , angel. What the heaven—”

“The prophecy,” Aziraphale mutters, fumbling in his pockets for the slip of paper. “Agnes’ final prophecy. _Choose your faces wisely, for soon enough you’ll be playing with fire?_ ” He gives up the search and drops his hands to the counter. Heart racing, he looks up at Crowley. “We can swap places. Long enough for me to face whatever punishment Hell has in mind for you and vice versa. _Hellfire_ , Crowley. If Agnes is right—and she always is—complete extermination is in the cards for us, but we can _avoid_ it.”

“It might buy us some time,” Crowley says with a frown, “but they’d figure it out. It’ll be in the books, and you know _both_ sides would follow up after something like that.”

Aziraphale shakes his head vigorously, feeling excitement start to pool in him. “It won’t! Or at least, it doesn’t _have_ to be. This?” he says, lifting his hands in front of him, palms facing Crowley. “It’s not a miracle. I don’t know what it is, but I spent a century being audited by head office. I had to comb through every single miracle I’ve ever performed— accidental or otherwise. But _this_?” He lowers his hands to where Crowley’s rest on the counter, bringing them to either side but leaving a bubble of space between them, as though warming himself by a fire. “This is something else. Something they don’t know about.”

Crowley turns his palms up to face Aziraphale’s. “How would it even… work?” he asks, his voice pale and very distant.

“I haven’t the slightest idea,” Aziraphale laughs. “I wouldn’t think to try it at all if it wasn’t for Agnes. But there’s… a connection, right? A pull? That can’t just be me.”

“Bloody hell,” Crowley breathes. “It’s… not just you.”

“Surely it’s at least worth a try?” Aziraphale says with a smile.

Crowley flares his nostrils and stares at him.

“Besides, if it doesn’t work?” Aziraphale continues. “If this pickle is something we can’t get out of, and we really are doomed? Don’t you want to at least…” he lowers his hands until they’re a hair’s breadth from touching Crowley’s, fluttering his fingers in the air like a pianist poised over the keys. “Know?”

There’s a puff of incredulous gold and a prickle of marigold from across the counter. Then, the taste of grapes hits his mouth, seconds before Crowley lifts his hands and gently slides them into Aziraphale’s.

For millennia, Aziraphale has observed the thread. This invisible and inexplicable force between them At first, he had looked at it with fear. Over time, fear had become curiosity. Then a hushed sort of wonder. But always, it has been tentative— watching from a distance, always so careful not to touch, even as the thread had tried to pull him in.

Their reunion in Barcelona had been the one time they’d leaned into it with all of themselves, allowing reality to fully disappear as they took the first steps into exploring this in-between space. They’d pulled away before making a complete map, but not before bringing a piece of the vineyard back into the world with them. A permanent shift in the shape of things, a persistent reminder that there is _more_ , should they ever reach for it.

Hazy colors start to bleed into the grey of the kitchen as Crowley’s fingers slide against his palms once more. Thumbs brush over the ridges of his knuckles and Aziraphale sighs, relaxing into it, coaxing the vineyard into the room and giving the thread permission to finish what they started in Barcelona.

It’s slow at first. Just a tingle under his fingertips as the familiar bond manifests between them, coiling around their hands with the lightest magnetic pull. A known quantity. Old, warm, comforting in spite of its peculiarity. The moment hovers like this for a few breaths, still and tranquil, a single thistledown seed on the breeze— before the wind picks up.

The thread splits.

Every point at which his skin connects with Crowley’s seems to create its own gossamer strand, all of them knotting and tangling around their hands, the sensation climbing up their arms like honeysuckle wrapping around a tree trunk, like vines up a trellis, like ivy finding impossible purchase in the brickwork as it scales a cottage. The threads twine their way up and around the two of them, snaking their way out of them as though they were spools, then splitting and multiplying and encircling them like mist.

Aziraphale has time to think that it should be frightening. That anything _this_ alien should be profoundly terrifying. But at the same time… it doesn’t feel alien at all. He focuses on the yellow of Crowley’s eyes, lets his hands glide through Crowley’s and up his wrists until they are holding each other by the forearms, and feels strangely at ease as the material plane of existence fades to background noise.

The grapes in Aziraphale’s mouth surge.

The colors and images in his periphery solidify as trees replace the slate counters and walls, and the smell of apples—sweet and crisp and almost floral—pushes its way into his awareness, bringing the feeling of something so _known_ with it, something so maddeningly distinct, something he knows he has lived or at least dreamed, but the memory of the dream is just out of his reach, a memory that keeps dissolving and drifting away when he tries to reach for it, and if he could just focus on it for a _second_ or perhaps let his eyes go _out_ of focus then he could find it, he could hold it, he could remember…

_If you let your mind wander, it almost looks like you’re underwater._

As easily as falling asleep, they both tip into the dream.

Into the vineyard that was also an orchard, but not really either of those things because neither existed yet. It is simply a _home_. A place that is wild and beautiful, comfortable and safe, that they had loved so dearly and returned to so many times. A place where dissonance had resolved into harmony. Where compromises had been made. Where love had grown.

Their wild garden. Theirs. His and Joriel’s.

[ ](IMAGE%20HOSTING%20LINK)

_Joriel._

_I loved you so much._

“Crowley, I never—” he trails off, distracted by the deep sapphire hue of his own voice, the smell of apples, the taste of grapes.

_The chronicler and the starmaker can stay in the heavens for now…_

Before anything can sink in, the threads pull again, unwinding further and weaving together in the cloud around them. The smell of jasmine fills the air briefly, pushed away by a harsh salt wind.

 _Didn’t realize your lot was so organized_.

The sea, the cliffs, the ridiculous misunderstanding. The earth pulling them together and the argument pushing them apart. The uncertainty and the fear nipping at Aziraphale while conflict and unrest had bubbled in Joriel.

The chronicler pulling the books around him like armor while the starmaker had sought strength and clarity in the sea. The bittersweet balm applied to troubled minds by finding places where they could think more and feel less.

“Aziraphale, I should have—”

Amber rings around him briefly, but they don’t have time to linger. Crowley lets the sentence hang in the salt air and the threads tug at them again. Marigolds fill Aziraphale’s mouth and a trilling whistle lights the air.

_Can you teach me?_

_Music_. They had made such music together. Whistling and humming and singing, learning the shape and the sound of each other’s voices, tucking it away in their hearts like a cherished treasure. Aziraphale had been so _delighted_ by drawing laughter out of a starmaker, and Joriel had been so _charmed_ by the chronicler’s awful attempts at whistling.

A laugh escapes Aziraphale, lighting up the air around them in soft periwinkle brushstrokes, the color of the sky on a clear winter morning. Crowley adds his gold to it, the two colors coiling together as they feel the thread pull again.

_Good eye. I’ve always thought of them as complementary colors._

A potent rush of jasmine and silvery grey moonlight through pine trees. A starmaker taking on the role of storyteller and a wonderstruck chronicler testing the limits of his imaginations for what he had thought was the first time. Volcanic moons and secret oceans and a love starting to put down roots inside of them. A love that neither of them had a name for yet, but it had never mattered because it didn’t need to be spoken.

_Words give us a starting point, but it’s up to the mind to take them further._

The floral spice of marigolds prickles through his mouth as the thread pulls at them again, tipping their minds into a new landscape. Moonlight and jasmine fade as sunlight drenches them and fiery blooms spread from their feet to the horizon.

More color than he had ever thought possible. Orange and yellow and green, but also the rich blue of the sky and a red and gold starmaker beside him. The word _color_ had been meaningless before that moment, when he had been the single pale spot in a sea of marigolds, nestled between the blaze on the ground and the bright dome of the sky. An overwhelmed chronicler’s mind grasping for logic. The starmaker rushing to catch him, joining him and guiding him through the awe.

And a petal… _Just a petal._

_Its roots are fine…_

_Passed between us._

_Taste is wild, right?_

There’s a final pull on the thread, one that comes with a new resistance as the final length of it spirals out of his center, leaving the empty spool exposed.

_It’s very colorful, this new planet._

A vast and achromatic space, bright and colorless, unflavored and unscented. A starmaker and a chronicler falling into each other’s orbit for the first time around the one point of color in the void, teetering over infinite possibilities, in this moment that is the beginning and the end and the center of everything.

_What do you think it’s like down there?_

_Stars if I know… I’m flying as blind as you are._

A crooked grin. A nervous smile reflected back. Then they’d reached out and met in the middle. A chronicler and a starmaker, holding onto each other by the forearm and braiding themselves together with a forgotten planet.

Aziraphale takes a breath. He forces his eyes to bring Crowley into focus, feeling the grip on his forearms tighten as he concentrates on just _existing_ in this middle place where he knows every beginning, sees every abandoned Earth, feels everything— feels _so much_.

Then he lets the breath out. Slowly, deliberately, carefully, they start to gather the skeins around them, Aziraphale winding his strands around Crowley’s spool and Crowley around Aziraphale’s.

The bright white light dims to grey as they work, the fluorescent hall shrinking down to slate walls and cupboards and countertops. A faint wisp of bergamot steam passes under Aziraphale nose. Staring at him from across the counter are his own wide and unblinking eyes, and dancing through his mouth… is wine.

They sit like this until long after Aziraphale’s tea grows cold— wearing each other’s bodies and clinging to each other’s arms, forgetting to blink, afraid to break the stillness. Feeling as though any movement will unmoor these recovered memories and send them drifting out to sea.

But the knowledge doesn’t fade. Nothing dissolves back into liminality. Instead, Aziraphale tastes wine on Crowley’s tongue, and the memories of finding and forgetting each other over and over bloom across them like a sunburn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The artist for this fic, katartstrophe, can be found on [Tumblr](https://katartstrophe.tumblr.com/) and on [Twitter](https://twitter.com/katartstrophe).


	20. The Icarus to your certainty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> My sincerest apologies to any readers I left hanging with this update! Editing this chapter turned into completely scrapping and rewriting it (trust me, it needed it, I'm very happy with where it ended up but it was _rough_ before I worked out all the bugs), and then the current state of the world did a real number on my productivity. Writer's block amplified by emotional fatigue, if you will. But! Here we are on the other side of that bridge and here is the promised double chapter conclusion to this story! May it be a soothing balm in a troubling time. <3
> 
> Anyone concerned about potential content warnings can check the chapter end notes for details (but potential spoilers? maybe? idk, i threw it at the end just in case). Nothing dark, and nothing that hasn't been in the tags since the beginning, I promise.

**The light of day**

The bookshop even _smells_ right. Old paper and tea and dust, all with that constant undercurrent of something undefinable, but absolutely known.

Crowley walks a slow lap around it, running Aziraphale’s fingers over the familiar spines of books. He drags them through the dust on the shelves to leave shining comet’s tails in the wood and imagines himself as a moon orbiting its planet. Adam has left behind flourishes and inaccuracies of his own—the Richmal Crompton books, the bag of sweets beside the sofa, the stack of comic books weighed down by one of Aziraphale’s antique clocks—but Crowley would expect nothing less from the imagination of an eleven year old.

Embellishments whose only purpose is to make the world a bit more interesting. A quick smile darts across his face, knowing Aziraphale will approve.

His path through the shop brings him to the sofa. Moving by instinct, he drops to his knees and reaches beneath it for the loose board, but his fingers can’t find purchase; the floor beneath the sofa is solid and perfectly smooth.

 _I guess I can’t expect the kid to get everything right. He got the important bits at least_ , he thinks glumly, turning to lean back on his heels with his back against the sofa.

He’s letting his eyes do a second, lazier reconnaissance of the room when they fall on Aziraphale’s desk. On the book sitting there. A dark leather cover with its title in slim gold calligraphy. With a frown, he leans forward and grabs it, then settles back onto the floor, stretching one leg out in front of him.

He lets the book fall open in his lap to an aggressively dog-eared page in Act V and finds an envelope tucked inside. An envelope with his name on it, written in Aziraphale’s neat handwriting. The edges of it are soft and fuzzed, as though years of frequent handling have worn down its corners and creases to something that perfectly fits the contours of the very specific hand currently running its fingertips over the word _Crowley_.

Like most things found in the bookshop, it feels old and well-loved. It also feels like _Aziraphale’s_.

He thinks of his drawings, of the importance of secrets kept over the millennia, the weight that comes with choosing how much of yourself to share and when to share it— and tucks the envelope back inside _A Midsummer Night’s Dream_. Instead of opening the letter, he runs his fingers gingerly down the text, takes in Pyramus’ dramatized and farcical death scene, and tears it out of the book.

He folds the page, slips it into his pocket, and leaves to meet Aziraphale.

* * *

** The night before **

Time is something that has become impossible to gauge. It can be done without clocks, of course— marked instead by the movement of the sun and moon and stars through the sky, the seasons, the passage of people through one’s life. Even by a measure of heartbeats or breaths as the currents of blood and air move through the body to the rhythm of _time_.

None of these things are factors in Crowley’s flat.

Aziraphale sits as still as a statue, his fingers pressing into Crowley’s arms, staring across the counter at his own face, and loses all track of time for the first time in centuries.

His mind is firmly moored in a past that he lived long before the universe existed as an expression of time. A past— _their_ past—which is now settling into the blank spaces in his memory that he hadn’t even realized were there. Dark corners that had simply blended into the contours of a familiar room, the shadows where Joriel had once lived, now flooded with light as a starmaker and a chronicler take their places at the beginning of his and Crowley’s story.

Or… beginnings, rather. He tries to sort them, tries to make sense of meeting for the first time so many times, tries to wrap his head around all the times their canvas had been wiped clean but never completely blank.

_Marigolds came first, I think. Or was it color? Your voice wasn’t always a color, was it? Were you a color by the sea? And the vineyard— The garden. It was… real._

_Wine. Six thousand years later, and you suddenly taste like wine._

_Tea_ , he finally thinks, after some amount of time that he guesses is more than a minute but less than an hour. He drops his eyes to the cup and begins to pull one hand toward himself, hoping the temperature or the smell or the taste or _something_ about the tea can ground him in the present, but a sharp inhale and a tightening of the hand on his arm stills his movement. He looks up to see Crowley’s eyes screwed shut and teeth gritted.

“Wait. Azir—” he says through gritted teeth, dropping the word halfway through and opening his eyes in alarm. Aziraphale sees his own voice flash around him, bright and brassy.

“Oh, that’s stra—” he trails off with his mouth partially open when he hears Crowley’s voice, utterly colorless, flow into the equally achromatic space.

They stare at each other for a few moments, then Crowley lets out a quick bark of laughter. It finds Aziraphale as a warm and soothing gold that is so obviously _Crowley’s_ laugh, completely unmistakable from any other sound on the planet, regardless of the fact that it’s hidden under an angel’s voice. Aziraphale imagines it as a letter tucked away inside an envelope and lets out his own staccato burst of giddy laughter at the thought, feeling adrenaline spike through him. It’s a quirk of his corporation he’s never quite understood—one of the few mechanisms he has never figured out how to control—but he finds he’s grateful for the rush of physical sensation that kicks his heart back into motion. A reassurance that, yes, he is a physical presence taking up space in the world. A reminder of his body.

Or, well— Crowley’s body.

“I appreciate the sentiment, my dear,” he says gently, speaking slowly and awkwardly around the lack of color in Crowley’s voice, “but unless you intend to hold onto me until the powers that be break down your door—”

“I absolutely do _intend_ ,” Crowley interrupts with another pained grimace. He slides his fingers down Aziraphale’s arm and hooks their thumbs together, bringing his other hand in to hold Aziraphale’s in both of his. There is a crescendo of rich, sweet tannins in Aziraphale’s mouth. Wine, not just lingering, but growing stronger.

“Might get awkward, depending on how long it takes our respective superiors to find us.”

“Don’t care,” Crowley says peevishly.

Aziraphale swallows a small smile. “It could be _days_.”

The grip around his hand tightens. “All the better.”

“Well then. I think perhaps we have quite a lot of time, and quite a lot to talk about.”

* * *

** The light of day **

There had been a moment, just before returning each other’s bodies, when Crowley wondered if he had accidentally stopped time. A moment when reality had seemed to slow, to warp, to shrink down to nothing but the two of them on the park bench. When it felt as though the entire world existed in their clasped hands.

One terrible thought had been screaming through his brain then. One fear, worded a thousand different ways, in the course of a single second.

_What if we lose it all when we swap back? What if all the memories go back to whatever void they were locked in, once we’re back in our proper bodies? What if we lose more than the old memories? What if this erases him? Erases six thousand years. Erases us. Puts everything back to ‘normal’ by erasing love._

_The kid saved the world and we saved our skins, but if that’s the price, was it worth it?_

_We should have written it down, filled books, composed ballads, built libraries to hold it, why didn’t we record it, preserve it, paint it, do_ something _with it besides touch hands and talk— I could have kissed you, taken your face in my hands and your lip between my teeth and tasted you, seen if you really taste like apples, like cider, like jasmine, I could have, I_ should _have, why didn’t I kiss you, what were we thinking, how can we be this bloody_ old _and somehow not have enough time…_

But there is no journey through memory as he feels the ethereal threads coil out of him again. No traversal of a sensory landscape as they unwind their way to the empty spools at their centers. The terrain of his mind does not shift or shatter as he twists his way back into his body. Instead, Crowley feels the panic take a breath and sit down as he comes to roost in his familiar configuration of limbs. The strange new smell of spiced cider lingers around him like a cloud. Still apples, but with new layers added. Aged and tended to and carried to their next chapter.

Something deceptively simple, now matured.

He releases Aziraphale’s hand, but the new smell doesn’t fade. He flexes his fingers and reaches for something mundane and earthly to calm the new roar of old memories, quipping about Aziraphale's flourish with the collar.

Jasmine creeps in to join the cider, followed by the rich azure streaked with forget-me-not blue when Aziraphale huffs in defense of tartan. Then periwinkle when they both let their laughs break the surface. A muted flurry of salt when Aziraphale says “I thought that _was_ the big one,” a worry quickly spirited away by a rush of flowers and remembrance.

Familiar comforts. Known quantities. _Home_.

All the while, Crowley takes stock of himself. He moves backwards through the new memories, starting in the garden and making his way to the marigolds, landing lightly on each beginning in turn, confirming its continued existence before facing forward and cataloging them all again, this time chronologically.

He leans back against the bench and watches Aziraphale from behind his dark lenses, wondering if this counts as another beginning, and if so, what number they’re on.

“Right. Time to leave the garden,” his mouth says.

 _I would run away with you gladly_ , says the rest of him.

* * *

The feeling follows them to the Ritz.

Crowley slips his hands into his pockets and lets himself float freely in the swell of colors and smells as they carry him along in their gentle current. The fear which had been coursing through him in Heaven—raw panic tempered with determination, an almost tangible sensation—settles, calming from a storm to a breeze. The torrent of adrenaline had carved a space in him, however, and he finds his head and his heart are eager to fill it.

It starts as a swell in his chest when Aziraphale falls into step beside him, his vision shifting into shades of blue. A swoop in his stomach when their arms almost brush and the wild, earthy smells of a garden tangle briefly with cider. A desperate tingling ache behind his eyes, at the back of his throat, the nape of his neck every time there’s a lull in conversation and the second, secret conversation continues, utterly uninhibited.

It spills over and seems to twist around their table at the Ritz. Tiny whirls of spiced apples, flashes of rich blue and periwinkle puffing out of Aziraphale like breath into frozen winter air. Their hands flit by each other above the table, close enough to feel the warmth radiating there. Eye contact held a heartbeat longer than usual seems to say _we could, we can, we have_ , before eyes and fingers dart away with furtive smiles.

They linger here, teetering on the precipice of _we can_ , savoring every drop of young love that settles gently in the old growth between them.

_We could. We can._

_There’s more._

They tap the lips of their champagne flutes together, toast _the world_ , and when Crowley takes a sip, all he can taste is cider.

And later, after the extravagant lunch and leisurely conversation stretches long enough to become an extravagant dinner and lingering glances, they release the tether from the table and float back into the gentle current, letting some unseen force pull them towards Soho.

Crowley acutely feels every fragment of his attention bob and dip and weave in the air around him, riding thermals of jasmine and waves of sapphire like a cloud of starlings— discrete entities suddenly moving in perfect and instinctual unison. A dance he’s always known, on some level, but has never allowed himself to move through the steps until now.

So he follows it. Relaxes and trusts the starlings to know the way through the streets. And when his feet deposit him in front of the bookshop, he pauses and stares up at the familiar building, looking at it through his own eyes for the first time since the fire. The sun has almost drifted into the golden hour before twilight, casting a warm glow over it which flows around every corner, curve, and pane of glass like water.

Aziraphale drifts ahead of him a few steps, then turns to look back at him curiously. “Everything alright?”

“Hmm? Yeah. Just…” _Admiring. Appreciating. Loving this bloody building more than any demon has ever loved anything and it’s still not what I love most._ He takes a breath and finds he’s calm. Serene. “Think I just realized the other shoe’s already fallen, is all.”

Jasmine blooms slow and sweet in the space between them. “That it has,” Aziraphale says, his voice glittering in shades of sapphire that make Crowley want to write ballads. Aziraphale steps to the side and gestures at the door with a deep bow. “After you?”

Crowley huffs out a fond laugh at the dramatics, then bounds past Aziraphale and onto the stoop. He swings all of his weight confidently into the door, his nose almost colliding with the window when he finds it locked for the first time in his memory.

“Pfff. The kid apparently missed the memo about how you never lock your door,” Crowley says. He snaps his fingers at the keyhole and throws his weight into a stubbornly still-locked door. “Well then. Sorry, angel. The Antichrist fixed the world but broke your bookshop.”

“I’ll have you know,” Aziraphale says airily, stepping up beside Crowley and pulling a small miracle out of the air, “that I _always_ lock my door.” With a flourish, he pushes on the door. His face dips into confusion when it refuses to budge. “What on Earth…”

Crowley smirks and crosses his arms, leaning against the pillar to watch as Aziraphale begins to pat down his pockets. “Do you even carry a key?”

“Of course I carry a key, what do you take me for?”

“You sure? Because in two hundred years, this door has never once been locked.”

“Mm, you don’t say,” Aziraphale mumbles, shooting a quick glance and a sly smile at Crowley.

“Should I find a rock?” sputters Crowley, talking over the sudden flush creeping up his neck. “Break a window?”

“Don’t you even joke about that, you old serpent,” Aziraphale gasps, then trails off as he pulls a folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. He frowns at it for a moment, then begins to unfold the page.

“I suppose I could try my hand at lockpicking,” Crowley says. “Never too late to pick up a new ski—”

“Did you use my body to _vandalize a book_?” Aziraphale interrupts, flipping the paper around and holding it up in the space between them. For all he tries to sound affronted, his voice glows pale and playful. A familiar _let me tempt you_ blue.

Crowley blinks at the page and feels every jest and retort about the lock flutter out of his head. He stares at the black and grey linework of Titania and Oberon on their cloud, the lantern of the moon shining down on the gleeful and chaotic snarl of mortals below, and tries to find an explanation for the page in Aziraphale’s hand. The beginning of that story.

 _It started with a loose floorboard. But, no… that’s not entirely correct. It began with a bookshop. But_ which _bookshop. This one? A shop in Norwich a few centuries ago? Except that’s not right either, because it_ actually _began on a starry night in the Sussex Downs a few centuries further back. Unless the reason I nicked the damn book in the first place was the drawings, in which case it began at the lighthouse. Or was it on the road to the lighthouse? Or would it be the first time I made art? A paintbrush in Athens? Stars? Moons?_

“The book had it coming,” he croaks, and reaches out automatically to take the page. For the first time since returning to his body, his hand brushes against Aziraphale’s.

It’s the barest suggestion of a touch, the tiniest exchange of heat between their fingertips, a breeze rippling the surface of a lake— but it brings a dramatic rush of apples with it, tart and sweet and now spiced. It makes the bookshop, the locked door, the Soho street fade into background noise as it shrinks the world back down to just the two of them. It pushes Crowley’s imagination into overdrive and he fancies the pillar at his back as the trunk of an apple tree, the lamp hanging above them a cluster of grapes, the angel in front of him the only other soul on the planet.

And it also brings something new. A flavor— rich and bitter and sweet all at once. Immediately recognizable as wine, yet unlike any wine he’s tasted before. It floods his mouth when their fingers touch and Crowley feels his kickdrum heart jump to life in his chest, pounding out a rhythm so desperately _known_ to him.

_We could. We can. There’s more._

Aziraphale stares back at him, breathing heavily through his nose. He flexes his fingers slightly, just a twitch of the knuckles at first, then lets his hand open like a flower. He takes another breath, then tangles his fingers together with Crowley’s, clutching the page in his other hand and letting it drift to his side.

There is a moment then—a moment that lives a full and satisfying life in the span of a single heartbeat—when Crowley realizes they’re about to tip over the edge. A rush of vertigo as they sway on this precipice one last time before leaning in and letting gravity win. The giddy realization that they are about to change everything and thank the stars or the saints or the earth or _who-bloody-ever_ for that.

It’s a moment that springs to life sometime between when Aziraphale takes a step forward and when he loops his free hand behind Crowley’s neck, the torn page crinkling beside his ear. A moment that grows old and grey and deliriously happy in the span of time between Crowley’s back leaving the pillar and his arm wrapping around Aziraphale’s waist. A moment that stands tall and sings a stunning aria, pulling Crowley’s attention into it for just long enough that when he returns to himself, his heart has taken flight and crashed into Aziraphale and he has no idea if it’s him kissing Aziraphale or Aziraphale kissing him.

He smells cider. Tastes wine. Sees a world in shimmering shades of blue and orange as their colors swirl into each other like plumes of smoke, ink in water, two clouds of starlings suddenly moving effortlessly as a single body.

And when Aziraphale’s back collides enthusiastically with the door, neither of them devotes a passing thought to the fact that it’s suddenly unlocked. Crowley grins and gasps for breath against Aziraphale’s mouth, the baffling taste of marigolds pulling a laugh out of him as he fumbles with the doorknob. Then the moment sighs contentedly and settles in for a long sleep as the bookshop lets them inside.

* * *

** The night before **

“Jupiter,” Aziraphale says suddenly, looking up from the tangle of their hands. “Its moons. I’ve always loved those moons.”

Crowley tilts his head to the side and almost manages to mask a smirk. “ _Have_ you, now?”

“I put them in the books, you know. The _moons_ aren’t new memories.”

“You didn’t know it was _me_ though.”

“That didn’t matter at the time.”

There’s a dramatic gasp from across the sofa, Aziraphale’s voice but cast in a playful saffron glow.

“Oh hush, there was plenty to admire about them on their own, regardless of who their starmaker might have been.”

There’s a whirl of gold, and Crowley’s floral spice mixes curiously with the wine once more. Flavors that seem like they absolutely shouldn’t work in tandem, but somehow lock together as perfectly as puzzle pieces. Crowley drops his eyes to their hands, shifting so that he can stack the fingers of his left with Aziraphale’s right, then runs a thumb up the inside of Aziraphale’s index finger. Aziraphale tastes wine and flowers and feels his mind trip over whatever it was he had just been thinking about.

“Secret oceans,” Crowley says in a hushed tone.

A feeling that is somehow both weathered second nature and overwhelmingly raw swoops through Aziraphale. He remembers the bright silver beacon of the moon. The faint scent of the pines and the much louder presence of jasmine. The _thrill_ of talking with someone who was as intrigued as he was by the _stories_ that hid inside the information. Crowley’s eyes as they had been—keen and mesmerizing, a deep gold that had caught the moonlight and thrown it back as glittering stars—somehow still so close to how they are now, if one knows how to look.

But… there’s more. Everything feels jumbled. Out of order.

“You—” Aziraphale begins, but stops and frowns around the memory. “You already tasted like marigolds. In the jasmine I mean. You talked about volcanoes and oceans and the whole time you tasted like flowers.”

“But not…” Crowley pinches his eyes shut for a moment. “Color. I don’t think you were a color then. _Stars_ , it’s weird having a memory of you without color.”

“ _Stars_ ,” Aziraphale echoes with a sharp exhale, feeling his heart trip over itself at the exclamation. “You say that a lot.” Then he gives his head a small shake. “Used to. Used to say that a lot.”

“Oh. Uh. Still do I guess,” Crowley says, propping his elbow against the back of the sofa and leaning into his hand. “Just— not out loud.”

The word _stars_ seems to echo through Aziraphale’s center. But it’s not a hollow sound. He thinks under different circumstances it might remind him of a forlorn cry bouncing off the walls of a canyon before fading away. Pebbles tumbling into a ravine and falling still at the bottom. Retreating footsteps in a vast and empty stadium. Instead, it seems to crescendo— a solo violin reverberating through a concert hall.

He tightens his grip on Crowley’s knuckles and takes a slow breath.

They had moved to the plant room at Aziraphale’s insistence, the cold grey of the kitchen being more than he could stand even once Crowley’s colors and flavors had seeped back into the room. Adding the sight and subtle smell of _green_ had felt monumentally important all of a sudden.

So Crowley had dragged him down the hallway by the hand, unwilling to give up physical contact for the trip across the flat, and summoned a sofa with a distracted snap of his fingers. Then they’d settled in and begun the absolutely perplexing task of trying to suss out a very old, very confusing timeline. A task made considerably more difficult by trying to navigate Crowley’s voice without color and deeply distracting by the new taste of wine.

“I think,” Aziraphale says slowly, frowning in concentration, “that the jasmine must have been very early. After marigolds but… before the sea?” He shakes his head at the turbulent memory. “What _happened_ by the sea? I’m not sure I completely understand it.”

Crowley scrubs at his face with his free hand and sighs. “There was a lot going on. In the background, I mean. Celestial rebellion and all that. You caught me in a bad mood, and holy _hell_ did it ever echo.”

“Yes, it certainly made an impression. I don't—” he screws his eyes shut and tries to think, tries to untangle the jasmine from the sea from the vineyard. “I don’t _think_ we ever went back.”

He tastes a faint hint of salt and opens his eyes to see Crowley staring silently into space. Aziraphale gives his hand a squeeze and pulls him back to the present.

“I went back,” he says slowly, a puzzled frown deeping across his features. “I went back a lot. Like I was… drawn to it.” He looks at Aziraphale, lets out a humorless laugh, and says, “Oh, this is weird.”

Then he toes off his shoes and leans back just enough to bring his feet up to the cushions. Once a socked foot finds itself wedged under Aziraphale’s thigh, he slowly unwinds their hands. He pulls back slowly, just far enough that they aren’t touching skin-to-skin anymore but still close enough that Aziraphale can feel the heat radiating from his palms. He hovers there for a few breaths—eyes wide and unblinking, looking like he’s poised to snatch Aziraphale’s hands back at the smallest movement—then seems to relax into whatever moment he was feeling out. With a small sigh, he snaps his fingers and summons a black leather portfolio case to his lap and rests both palms on it.

Aziraphale raises his eyebrows.

“Listen,” says Crowley. “There have apparently been gaps. But not all of them are from, um. Before. There are other things you don’t know.” His voice takes on a hint of red and rust as he speaks. He swallows and stares down at his hands. Takes a huge breath and lets it out as a sigh.

Aziraphale rests a hand on Crowley’s ankle and offers a cautious smile around the wine in his mouth. “There are probably quite a lot of gaps,” he says quietly. “Six thousand years is a long time.”

“This one’s different,” insists Crowley with a shake of his head. “It’s not anything that’s been forgotten, it’s just something that’s not been said. And it feels… I don’t know, important somehow. If things go wrong— _don’t_ give me that look, this could very well go completely off the rails and you know it. _If_ things go wrong. I just… Want you to see this, is all.” He clears his throat. “Right then. This is where I went after Florence.”

And Crowley begins to tell a story about limping through the end of the world with a fleeting friend. Using Aziraphale’s voice, he creates a map from Florence to a churchyard full of jasmine to a sandy little island overlooking the North Sea.

The road ends there, the story turning from a map into a sort of portrait instead as he speaks about a lighthouse, his carefully maintained role as a local cryptid, a second and final visit from his friend. His eyes drift to the hallway when he talks about Adrielle and Grace, the red which had crept into his voice flickering out and settling into an even-keeled orange as he stares intently at a point in the middle distance. Aziraphale follows his gaze, looking past the comforting green of the plants and into the cool, colorless dark of the hallway, and feels several moving parts in his mind slide into place. He thinks he suddenly understands exactly why Crowley’s flat is as barren as it is.

It’s when he tells Aziraphale about the garden that came after Adrielle that he finally opens the portfolio. He flips through the papers, pulls out a page, and passes it to Aziraphale.

It’s a drawing of a lighthouse, surrounded by rolling dunes and scrubby trees, a choppy sea in the background. The picture is wonderfully detailed, the charcoal purposefully smudged and blended and layered in such a way as to make the entire landscape feel alive, the sea turbulent, the beacon startlingly bright in spite of being essentially composed of shadows.

Aziraphale opens his mouth in surprise and looks up at Crowley to question the drawing, but Crowley is already passing him another small stack. “Yep. My haunt,” he says with a gruff nod, and returns his attention to the portfolio.

Aziraphale looks down at the new pages in his hands. Botanicals. Each sheet is devoted to a single flower or plant, also drawn and hatched and shaded in charcoal, as much attention given to flaws and bruised petals as to the delicate beauty of each plant. One page is devoted to a single daisy. Another, a zinnia. Lavender, an orchid, a tulip. The frilled petals and feathery leaves of a marigold.

Before Aziraphale can find his words, Crowley nods again, states simply, “My other haunt,” and passes him another drawing.

A roofed horse-drawn wagon, slightly reminiscent of a modern vardo. It’s drawn from a strange angle— slightly behind and to the side, so as to make the person in the handler’s seat appear as a nondescript silhouette. A charcoal ghost fading into the terrain of the paper. The driver is an afterthought, however, attention drawn instead to the wagon itself. To the flowers covering it. Dozens of small pots fastened to the outside, filled with chamomile and pansies. A splash of marigolds near the front. Zinnias bursting from the roof.

Aziraphale’s mind whirs as he tries to fill in the spaces between Crowley’s words, searching for a way to connect this artist’s interpretation to the picture his imagination had formed and wondering how many details Crowley is keeping locked in his heart.

Before he can think about it too deeply, he tastes salt at the back of his mouth and sees the image of a cresting wave pass through his mind’s eye. He looks up to see a stillness fall over Crowley, his hands holding the portfolio open as he stares into the case. He clears his throat and flicks his eyes up to the hallway again. He takes a breath and the salt fades. The wave recedes.

“Haven’t looked at these in a while,” he says by way of explanation. His voice is quiet but a steady, neutral orange. He pulls two pictures free and passes them to Aziraphale. “I didn’t do the color one. That was— That was Adrielle. It felt wrong to separate them though.”

Aziraphale stares down at the two portraits in his lap. One an absolute sunburst of color and softness, the other a shifting spectrum of grey, yet somehow they’re a matched set. Light and the shadows it casts. He finds he can almost picture their gaits, their mannerisms, what their home might have looked like, based on the careful details put into their likenesses.

He inserts their images into the story Crowley had been telling and feels a soft knell of sorrow bloom through him. The feeling of friendship and loss, suddenly thrown into sharp focus as he holds the memory of someone who had been so important to Crowley, someone whose echo is still heard six hundred years later, but who he will never get to meet. He wonders how she might have taken her tea and reckons that, for the first time, he fully grasps the disappointment felt by humans with unfortunately timed birthdates in regards to Icarus.

“The marigolds,” he says weakly, reaching for something known to steady himself on and landing on the border of flowers drawn around Adrielle. “What made you draw marigolds?”

Crowley lets out a breath borders on a laugh. “It was a whole thing,” he says with a vague wave of his hand. “I told her about Rome. She was very… taken with it. They always made me think of her after that.”

Aziraphale hums thoughtfully. He’s curious about the story that might lie there, but doesn’t dig for more than Crowley wants to tell. “And the zinnias?” he asks instead.

“Sort of the reverse. They were how she met Grace. Apparently both of them were drawn to the color. In a weird way, I always thought of her as a zinnia.”

“You did a remarkable job capturing them in charcoal. They… _feel_ colorful somehow.”

“That was another seed she planted, actually. Something she said on the road one day. ‘ _You can still make art in greyscale_ ,’ dropped into conversation, casual as anything. Dunno if she ever realized she turned my whole world on its head with that.” Then he shakes his head, scoffs to himself, and adds, “ _Humans_.”

“They really do think with their hearts, don’t they?” Aziraphale says, not taking his eyes off the portraits.

Crowley grunts in agreement as he fiddles with the portfolio again. He pulls a final page free and sets the case aside.

“Anyway,” he says. “Those were all, um. Practice. This one’s the whole point of that long-winded story.” Crowley pulls his other leg up onto the sofa and secures both feet under Aziraphale, leaning his chin against his knees as he passes him the picture.

Aziraphale's heart flutters a strange rhythm when he looks at the parchment. It’s another portrait, this time of his own likeness, drawn in the delicate greys of charcoal, shaded and blended in such a way that there are almost no visible lines. As though he had dipped a brush directly into light and shadow and brought them together on the page, perfectly recreating every feature of Aziraphale with startling accuracy— his eyes, the subtle uptick of his nose, his wild curls. Another botanical frame is drawn around the bust— a canopy of apple blossoms along the top and jasmine creeping down the sides to tangle itself into the lily of the valley along the bottom.

He looks up at Crowley again and finds him staring owlishly from behind Aziraphale’s eyes.

“Crowley, I— You did this at the lighthouse?”

“Yep.”

“From _memory_?”

“Mm-hmm.”

“It’s—”

Aziraphale feels the logical side of himself stirring, edging in to help him analyze the situation as his sentimental side becomes increasingly flustered. He thinks about how Crowley has always been one to _show_ what he means rather than try to say it. A gift, a quiet helping hand, a play turned into a global phenomenon that has echoed for centuries simply because Aziraphale liked it. ‘ _Lunch, my treat, anywhere you want to go._ ’ Meaning reflected through action, rather than words.

He feels it slot together in his mind like a puzzle as he stares down at the portrait and realizes he’s holding a love letter.

“It’s _extraordinary_ ,” he breathes.

* * *

** The light of day **

At some point, Aziraphale had dropped the page.

His hands are at Crowley’s back, framing his face, threading their way into his hair—his hands are _everywhere_ —and as Crowley’s mind gasps and sputters and spins in giddy circles, the only coherent thought it’s able to latch onto is _where did the page go? He was holding a piece of A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and now he is not, and this makes no sense._

 _Ridiculous. Absurd. Aziraphale is kissing you like his life depends on it, or maybe like his life finally_ doesn’t _depend on it, and all you can think of is a sodding book. Ludicrous. Ludicrous in every possible way._

Then, as if rising to the challenge, his mind decides to offer up a second coherent thought, and forces, _you always did like the funny ones_ , to the forefront.

And Crowley laughs. He pulls back enough to rest his forehead against Aziraphale’s and fully conceptualizes the enormity of the weight which has been lifted off them.

It’s just a quick burst at first. A whoosh of air that leaves him in response to the nonsensical train of thought— but it’s gold. It tastes like wine and marigolds, smells like cider and jasmine, swirls around him in colors that feel like sunlight and moonlight at the same time. It’s enchanting. Overwhelming. Too many new sensations all at once— and they’re _incredible_ , but he has no idea which ones to focus on.

The two of them stumble into something that _might_ be a table and has _probably_ always been there, but the concept of _the bookshop_ is becoming more abstract by the second. Crowley pulls off his sunglasses and tosses them onto the probably-a-table, then buries his face into Aziraphale’s shoulder and lets the cacophony of sensations pull the laugh all the way out of him.

“Angel,” he manages, his voice muffled against Aziraphale’s collar. “This is— I don’t— I have _no idea_ —”

Then Aziraphale is laughing too. “I think we’re on rather even footing there.”

“It’s just so _much_.”

Aziraphale reaches for his hand and laces their fingers together. “We can stop,” he says gently, all jasmine and apples and spice. Crowley looks up at his soft smile and mussed hair, and no part of him wants to stop.

“Do you want to? Stop?”

Aziraphale laughs again, his colors shifting in a way that makes Crowley think, _kind, concerned, supportive_. “I do not, I assure you. But I’m not the only one with a vote. We could… slow down a bit?” he says. He reaches for Crowley’s other hand, pulling it to him and placing it against the small of his back. Then he moves his own hand to Crowley’s shoulder.

 _A waltz position_ , Crowley realizes with an amused grin. “How slow?” he asks.

“As slow as we need. We have time.”

The new sensations are still bright and loud but slowly becoming easier to parse, as though his eyes are slowly adjusting to bright sunlight after hours in a dark room.

He leans into Aziraphale and they start a subtle, swaying movement. It’s not quite a dance, but he’s not content to stand still either. “Like flying into the bloody sun,” he mumbles around a mouthful of marigold. The laughter calms to smiles—still giddy and restless, crackling just beneath the surface like a lit sparkler—but he’s able to take a step back from it now.

“I should hope not. Perhaps just _near_ the sun, or a path _around_ it.”

“ _Pfff_. No, I just meant… A handful of touches in six thousand years and suddenly all this. It’s. A lot.”

“I know what you meant,” Aziraphale says with a happy little hum. “And it’s eight. Before this week, anyway.”

 _Eight_. Crowley understands the significance of the number immediately. The memory of each instance lives in him like a blaze of light. Sometimes he thinks of them as being stitched together like a constellation, but with each point still as its own unique star, every memory of touching Aziraphale standing out in complete and perfect detail. And not just the sight and the sound and smell of it. The _feeling_ that had come with each touch—whether it was desire, comfort, camaraderie, or just _home_ —is strong enough to be a physical ache.

Aziraphale takes a step forward, bringing their bodies almost flush. He rests his temple against Crowley’s shoulder and continues their slow sway.

“Is this alright?” he asks.

There’s wine, cider, new colors and too many flowers— but it’s gaining a layer of sense. It’s starting to pull itself into tune and resemble a song in addition to the din.

“Mm-hmm.”

“The jasmine is lovely.”

Crowley lets out a soft laugh. “Isn’t it? Best smell on the entire planet. _Still_ makes me think of Athens.”

“Why Athens?”

“You were always happy there,” Crowley says. He closes his eyes and focuses on the jasmine currently filling the room. Isolates it and just _admires_. “It sort of became… a regular thing in Athens. And after.”

There’s a beat of silence from Aziraphale, then, “Crowley?”

“Hmm?”

“Do you want to try, er… cataloging it? We could step through it slowly.”

“Um. Through Athens?”

Aziraphale laughs, turns his head, and noses under Crowley’s jaw, plants a small kiss on his neck. “The touches.”

“You want to— write a book?” Crowley says, too lost in the flowers and drunk on the wine to follow Aziraphale to whatever point he’s trying to make.

“A b— No, Crowley, not a book. There are other ways to tell a story.”

“You’re gonna have to help me out here. Very distracted.”

“It’s just a thought but… I’m assuming you remember all eight as clearly as I do.”

“Clear as crystal.”

“What if,” Aziraphale says, holding their clasped hands out to the side and pulling Crowley into the slow and silent waltz, “we go back to the beginning? Revisit each touch and move on when we’re ready.”

Crowley isn’t _entirely_ sure what Aziraphale has in mind, but doesn’t put significant effort into puzzling it out yet.

Instead he smiles, hums out a laugh, and says, “Lead the way, angel.”

* * *

Aziraphale pushes open a door somewhere in the realm above the spiral staircase. “Eden,” he says, and pulls Crowley inside by the hand. “You set a very unfair standard for all handshakes that followed.”

It turns out there is a small bedroom nestled above the bookshop. Modestly furnished and entirely unlived in when considered in comparison to the rest of the shop, but comfortable. Dusky golden sunlight pours in through a window, creating shimmering pockets of light and shadow in the corners.

“ _Stars_ , you were beautiful,” Crowley says, and allows himself to be maneuvered into the room. “Bloody terrifying too. Really did feel like flying into the sun. Do you have _any idea_ how weird it was smelling apples after the whole mess with the humans?”

Aziraphale laughs and the room fills with flowers and moonlight. “I think I might have an inkling, dear.”

Crowley is certain he had a retort prepared for that, but feels it promptly sublimate when Aziraphale kisses him again. Matching him touch for touch becomes the only important thing in the world, so that’s exactly what he does.

* * *

“Rome,” Crowley says, kissing his way up the inside of Aziraphale’s thigh. “All that business about _tempting_ me— that had to have been on purpose.”

“Not sure what you mean,” Aziraphale breathes, and sinks back into the pillow. The jewel tone of his voice sparkles and refracts as his breath grows erratic, a gemstone catching the light and pulling it apart into stars.

Crowley grins and gently nips at his leg. “Fine, be coy. But now that I know _exactly_ what I must have sounded like? _Tasted_ like?” He punctuates each word with a kiss or a graze of his teeth or a press of his fingers, speaking slowly and moving slower. “I can’t help but wonder who was tempting who.”

“ _Whom_ ,” Aziraphale corrects, then arches his back and loses his grasp on language when Crowley takes him into his mouth.

* * *

“Constantinople,” Aziraphale murmurs into the fading light. “The thread?”

Crowley wraps his arms a little tighter, pulls Aziraphale’s back against his chest and presses a kiss into the back of his neck. Holds it there. “Mm-hmm,” he mumbles. “You were very loud. I couldn’t find a moment’s peace.”

“You were looking for peace, were you?”

“I was looking for you,” Crowley says with a content sigh. “Same thing.”

* * *

“Bithynia,” Crowley says into the darkness. He’s not sure if he had drifted to sleep and back, or if he’d just been daydreaming, but the sounds of the city float in on a breeze through the open window. He suddenly remembers the world. “The thread for you too?”

Aziraphale hums something sleepy and unintelligible that sounds like affirmation, then shifts his weight to rest his head against Crowley’s chest. He presses the length of their bodies flush, creates a seam from shoulder to knee. Tangles their feet together under the blanket.

“You know,” he says. His voice is heavy and tranquil, the dark blue of open waters. “That was when I realized exactly _how much_ I loved you.”

Crowley pulls in a tiny breath— just a morsel, a quick gulp of air, not enough to stretch the lungs or nourish the blood, but enough to let the taste of wine spread through his mouth. He smells jasmine, spiced apples, all the earthly wonders that had existed in their garden on an abandoned Earth springing back to life in his mind—

—And he says nothing. What could he _possibly_ say to something like that? What could he say that Aziraphale doesn’t already know, already perceive with every sense available to him?

Instead he smiles. He draws feather-light fingers up Aziraphale’s spine, pulling a shiver of jasmine out of him to tangle with the marigolds, and traces slow circles through the fine hairs at the nape of his neck. He stares out the window at the few stars that burn bright enough to be seen through the glare of London, wonders if any of them have a view of Icarus at the moment, and enjoys their language of stillness.

* * *

“France? It was France, right? Somewhere in France. France? France. I don’t think that town had a name,” Crowley babbles, squirming and gasping in delight as Aziraphale takes him apart with his hands. He tries to wiggle forward, to close the final centimeters between them, but Aziraphale puts his free hand against Crowley’s sternum and holds him gently at bay. They lie on their sides facing each other, Aziraphale’s other hand working between them slowly, rhythmically, jasmine and marigolds bursting around them like lens flares as Crowley unravels.

“It most certainly did have a name,” Aziraphale says, filling the air with his maddeningly wonderful _let me tempt you_ blue. “ _Surely_ you remember.”

His edges start to blur. He sucks in a breath and lets it out as some combination of a wild giggle and an enthusiastic swear. “Faketown. Frenchopolis. The town that wasn’t. Temptationville. _Christ,_ angel. I can’t—”

“Not my fault you didn’t pay attention.”

“Attention. Mine. You have it. S’Yours.”

Aziraphale leans in to nuzzle the pulsepoint under Crowley’s jaw. Nips at an earlobe. Moves his hand from Crowley’s sternum around his back and pulls their bodies together, chest to chest, hip to hip. Crowley gasps and opens his mouth to babble some more, or perhaps swear again, or maybe just start making non-words— but Aziraphale takes the opportunity to start kissing him, and he doesn’t find out what might have tumbled out of him.

The sunrise outside the window is a glorious display of light and color, but neither of them take the time to admire it, confident in the knowledge that there will be many more to come.

* * *

“Barcelona,” Aziraphale sighs, eyes closed and cheek against the pillow.

Crowley drapes himself over Aziraphale’s back, kisses his shoulder, his neck, his temple. He wraps one arm around Aziraphale’s middle, rests the other on his thigh, and falls blissfully still.

“ _Barcelona_ ,” echoes Crowley. He lets his eyes drift shut and rests his forehead against Aziraphale’s shoulder blade. “If I had to pick a favorite…”

“Oh, easily. You don’t though.”

“Yes, but I’d _like_ to. Very covetous, me.”

He observes Aziraphale from behind closed eyes. The smell of him, the taste, his colors. The warmth and softness under his hands. How it all mixes with his own. He syncs their breaths. Recalls the memory of Aziraphale pulling him up and out of the darkness. Turning on a light and leaving it on.

He realizes that, at some undefinable moment between stumbling into the shop and landing in this bed, his eyes had adjusted to the sunlight. That he can speak in their synesthesia as easily as breathing. He can sing to the tune of it. Paint in the colors of it.

“ _You_ , angel. You. Yours.”

Aziraphale seems to understand. He lets out a soft laugh, clutches at the sheet and pushes his hips back toward Crowley.

Crowley gasps around a smile, then starts to move inside him again.

* * *

“The church,” pants Crowley. Aziraphale smiles and pulls back from the kiss, hitches one of Crowley’s legs over his shoulder and anchors his other hand against the jut of a hip bone.

“Barely a touch, that one.”

“Tell that to my scorched feet.”

“I didn’t say it wasn't _significant_ ,” Aziraphale laughs. He turns his head to the side and kisses Crowley’s ankle, his calf, his shin. “A close second to Barcelona, all things considered.”

Crowley is so thrown by Aziraphale calmly saying ‘ _all things considered_ ’ during sex that a breathless laugh is the only response he can manage. The sun chooses that moment to reach a cheeky ray of orange twilight through the window, where it mingles with the gold in Crowley’s laugh to illuminate Aziraphale above him, casting him in a light so angelic that it’s almost comedic in its hyperbole.

And Crowley gives up any hope of composure. He throws an arm across his face, arches his back and wriggles and twists under Aziraphale in an attempt to pull him deeper, and loses himself to delight.

* * *

“Here. 2008.”

Crowley had been halfway to sleep; he’s floating in the surreal borderland between dreams and consciousness, when Aziraphale’s voice drifts into view.

He opens his eyes. The sun has set, but night hasn’t fallen yet. The world is dressed in the blue hour just before last light, the room cast in soft shadows that make him think of water. Rainclouds and fog.

Aziraphale is lying on his back, staring out the window with a peaceful smile on his face. Crowley curls himself into the space beside him and rests his head on Aziraphale’s chest.

“Mm,” he mumbles. “Dolphins.”

Crowley can’t _technically_ see Aziraphale roll his eyes, but he sees a scoff cast in a color far more amused than it’s meant to sound, and smiles to himself.

“Yes, dear, _dolphins_ ,” he says, and swats Crowley gently on the head with something. “Among other things.”

Crowley opens his eyes and lifts his head to turn his grin on Aziraphale, but finds himself staring at the envelope in his hands instead.

“So,” Aziraphale says. “There are some gaps on my end too. Though I do think you already know most of this.” His expression grows softer and his voice a darker blue as he speaks. “It still feels important,” he says, and holds out the letter.

Crowley takes it reverently and sits up against the headboard. He turns it over a few times. Runs his fingers over the soft fray at the edges, learns the texture and smell of the paper, the way the ink of his name has soaked and blended into the page.

Aziraphale leans against the headboard beside him and watches curiously, but doesn’t say anything until the room grows too dark to see by.

“You’re making me wonder if I should have bothered to put anything _inside_ ,” he says, reaching over to switch on a small reading lamp on the bedside table. “Your next gift from me will simply be a box of envelopes.”

“Covetous, remember?” Crowley grins.

“Mm. Well, take your time.” His voice is pale, playful, full of jasmine. “Should I get a book? Put the kettle on?”

“I only get to open it for the first time once,” Crowley says, sliding his fingers under the seal and easing the envelope open. “Supposedly.”

He had been expecting a letter, and while it does appear that there is a letter at the bottom of the bundle he pulls out, it’s not what catches his eye first. A photograph of Icarus sits on the top of a small stack of papers. Grainy, slightly blurry, and in black and white, but very clearly the comet. _Their_ comet.

“1910,” Aziraphale says softly, leaning over to admire the picture with him. “It caused _quite_ the commotion that year.”

Crowley shifts the picture to the side, and he snorts at the newspaper clippings under it about a _comet that may snuff out life on Earth,_ and ridiculous ads for something called ‘comet pills.’

“I can’t _believe_ I slept through this,” he laughs.

Aziraphale blinks. “I’m sorry, you what?”

“Mm, yeah. Took a nap and it kind of got away from me,” he says casually. “Missed it entirely that year.”

“ _Got away from_ — Crowley, how long did you sleep for?”

Crowley puts the photo and the clippings to the side, flipping through the next few pages in the stack. A few dried and pressed marigolds tumble out from between them. He tilts his head to the side and smiles at them, feeling his heart do a small flip in his chest.

“Hmm? Oh. A while,” he says, arranging the flowers across the top of the duvet. He plucks the last papery bloom out of the bundle in his hands and settles it in Aziraphale’s tousled hair.

Aziraphale tries to pull on an annoyed pout, but the smell of cider that swirls around Crowley tells a different story. “How long is _a while_?” he asks, his voice sparkling its dark, affectionate blue.

“Umm. A few decades I think?” Crowley hums absently, still wearing his floaty smile and turning his attention to the next photo. Icarus, but close up. Still blurry and in greyscale, but photographed from space, its crags and valleys lit by its strange ghostly light. “Was this 1986?”

Aziraphale stares at him for a few beats before shaking his head incredulously looking down at the photo in Crowley’s hands.

“Oh,” he says. “Yes. You were so disappointed about not being able to see it that year. I didn’t know if you had the heart to look for the satellite pictures, so I saved them for you.”

Crowley blinks at him—one long shuttering and opening of his eyes, as slow and sleepy as a cat—leans over to kiss his temple, then turns his attention to the letter.

He takes it in slowly, pausing as often as possible to ask Aziraphale for the story behind each crossed out word, every note in the margins, the blotted ink and the smudges and the tea stains. And when he reaches the final postscript, the empty one at the bottom of the pile of fond footnotes, he raises a sly eyebrow at Aziraphale and says, with all the dramatics he can muster, “Why Aziraphale, it appears you’re not finished.”

Aziraphale settles back against the pillows, pulling Crowley down beside him and nestling in against his side. “That’s the general idea, yes.”

* * *

** The night before **

“You’re very warm,” Crowley mumbles into his palm. He’s sitting sideways on the sofa, knees drawn up and leaning into an elbow. His socked feet are still wedged under Aziraphale’s thigh. “Are all angels this warm? Is this just a _you_ thing? You’d think I’d remember being this warm, even if it _was_ six millennia ago.”

Aziraphale smiles at the sight of his own face, more relaxed than he thinks he’s ever personally been. Crowley’s cheek is comically smooshed against his hand, every blink coming slower and heavier than the last, his head slowly drifting towards his shoulder as he melts into the cushions.

“I certainly don’t know, but you could hunt down Zophiel and ask them about the effects of celestial essences on corporeal temperatures when you’re upstairs.”

Crowley wrinkles his nose. “Pfff, wha— Ew. No. It was rhetorical, angel.”

“And I was kidding, dear,” Aziraphale says, tilting his head back and staring serenely into the leaves of a massive ficus. “Zophiel’s really not so bad though. I bet you’d like them.”

Crowley snorts and lifts his eyebrows.

“Maybe not… immediately,” Aziraphale adds, “but they have a way of growing on you.”

“Mm, I’ll keep that in mind,” Crowley says, stifling a yawn. “If things go pear-shaped and I need an agent on the inside to aid in my daring escape, I shall turn my charming wiles on the Liege of the Library—”

“—Head Archivist.”

“—Hoarder of Knowledge—”

“— _Archangel of Wisdom_ , tsk, _honestly_ Crow—”

“—The Original Nerd?”

“ _Crowley_ ,” Aziraphale laughs, tasting marigolds before he turns to see the devilish grin spread across an angelic face. “You’d best get this all out of your system now if we want to have any hope of pulling off this ridiculous caper.”

Crowley stretches luxuriously across the back of the sofa, resting his head on his forearms like a cat in a sunbeam. “Do I need to remind you that this _caper_ was your idea?”

“Agnes’ idea,” Aziraphale corrects. “Or, perhaps it _was_ our idea and Agnes just had the foresight to know that we were going to act it out. I’ve never quite understood how the cards fall with this whole _correct prophecy_ business.”

“Chicken or the egg,” mumbles Crowley.

“Apple or the seed.”

“ _Pffft._ ”

Aziraphale grins. “Too on the nose?”

Crowley closes his eyes and sighs out a string of unintelligible sounds, the words _low-hanging fruit_ nestled somewhere in the middle. Fondness blooms through Aziraphale, warm and slow, at the sight, the sound, the taste of it. He lets his gaze wander over the plants, breathes in the faint smell of the leaves, imagines them as fruit trees. Remembers the first garden.

“Crowley,” he says softly, placing a hand on his forearm. The shadow of a smile passes over Crowley’s face at the touch and a small shiver travels through him, but doesn’t open his eyes. “Do you want to sleep?”

“Mmf. Yeah. Bitch of a week.”

“Do you have a bed?”

“‘Course I have a _bed_.” he huffs. “Wha’d’you take me for?”

“Someone whose sitting room didn’t even have a sofa before a literal miracle intervened.”

“S’Because it wasn’t a _sitting room_ before tonight. S’Just a thinking room.”

“Alright then, would you like to move to a _sleeping room_?”

Crowley cracks an eye open and peers at him, a sleepy smile spreading across his face. “Nah,” he says, and slips his eye shut again. “Sleep here.”

As soon as he hears the words, Aziraphale realizes he doesn’t want to migrate to a new room either. Not yet. He moves his hand up Crowley’s arm, shifts his weight to offer a shoulder, murmurs, “Get comfortable at least. You’ll wake up with a crick in my neck if you insist on sleeping like that.”

There’s a grumble from Crowley, but he doesn’t resist. He lets Aziraphale’s arm loop around his back and coax him in, untangles himself from the back of the sofa and leans into Aziraphale’s side, resting his head on the angel’s shoulder. He lets out a massive sigh that tastes like wine and flowers, feels like sunlight and a summer breeze, sounds like the color of a sunset sparkling off the sea— then falls still. His breathing slows. Steadies. Settles into a gentle rhythm.

To the sound of this breath—the warmth and the weight and the taste of the person next to him—Aziraphale tries to chart the depth of what he’s feeling. The shape and size and intensity of his heart.

He has loved Crowley for centuries. Millennia. Perhaps from the beginning (though that word means quite a bit more than it did just this morning). He has known this, accepted it, made a space for the love to live inside him— but he’s never felt he could _touch_ it. He’d always thought of it as a flame; a source of warmth and light, but never something to be held. He had accepted this too, gladly and easily. The push and pull of Crowley’s orbit had become a joyful dance at some indefinable point. The presence of marigolds and a sunset voice, figuring out all the ways to draw out gold and amber, how to make a vineyard spring to life in the space between them, had been more than enough to eclipse base desires.

But old vines, as it turns out, can bear new fruit.

He closes his eyes. Breathes as deeply and slowly as he can, luxuriating in the way the love reverberates through him. He allows himself a smile and wonders idly if Crowley is suddenly dreaming of jasmine. Then, realizing that he’s essentially alone with the flat, he puts the feeling to bed for the night and settles his gaze on the steely darkness of the hallway.

He hones in on the lack of color, the absence of warmth and light and sensory information, and uses the space to think a little more and feel a little less.

In the quiet that follows, Aziraphale thinks about the drawings arranged in neat rows across the floor in front of them, this missing chapter of Crowley suddenly revealed. He thinks about the star charts scattered chaotically around the room across the hall, a piece of Crowley that he thought he had known, now seen in a new light.

He takes carefully measured breaths, focusing on the press of Crowley’s weight against him—a sensation that manages to be both so simple and so complex—as he thinks about tea and comets, love and loss, stories and who they belong to. What they become after the teller leaves them behind.

He lets his gaze drift from the grey hallway and into the inky shadows of the darkest corner of the room and he thinks about the sea. He anchors his heart in the stillness of the flat and submerges his thoughts in the depths of Earth’s oceans— a boundless and untameable force that answers to no one but the moon. He thinks of the way life manages to thrive in its impossible conditions and perpetual darkness. The questions that can never be answered. The _mystery_.

He thinks about all of this and feels utterly at peace as he realizes that it’s not answers to questions he’s looking for. It’s not even necessarily _asking the questions_ where his passion lies. It’s everything that exists between those two points. The endless stories that burrow into the space between the baffling question and the answer that may never come. It’s always been about learning what lives in the hidden places, because there is always _more_.

And when he feels he’s followed his head too far from his heart—when the cold, dark water starts to press in on him too heavily—he follows the taste of wine back to the surface, returning home to the soothing warmth which is starting to snore very softly into his shoulder.

He looks down at Crowley, sleeping soundly in the body of an angel, cosy as anything, and fancies himself a guardian. A sentry sitting watch through the night, keeping the watchfires lit and the monsters at bay while the adventurer takes some much-needed rest.

For the first time in his very long existence, Aziraphale rates himself an _excellent_ principality.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [all that was shown to me, was something foreknown to me](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PELeEo33JXs)  
>    
> **cw:** this is the Sex Chapter. It's not explicit by AO3's E-rating standard, and there are no kinks or acts that I think warrant extra tagging, but it is definitely R-rated so ymmv. Anyone who would prefer to not read the sex scene can skip from the third "Light of day" header, pick back up at "2008," and not miss anything important to the story.


	21. Amor fati

_“At the still point of the turning world. Neither flesh nor fleshless;_   
_Neither from nor towards; at the still point, there the dance is,_   
_But neither arrest nor movement.”_

-T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

The thing about endings is that they are impossible to define. Even the most meticulously planned and planted seed, once sprouted, takes on a life of its own that becomes impossible to _completely_ control. A gardener may prune and tend and train the vines, but the seed and the gardener are not the only important factors. Climate must also be considered. The soil and the topography and even the surrounding plants all become factors in its growth.

And what of _the end_ for this seed? Is it an adult plant? An established garden? The fruit it will one day produce, or the wine made from this fruit?

Or perhaps it’s the traveller who carries a wineskin on their hip. The pilgrim for whom there is always just one more bend in the path, one more bridge to cross, one more hill to crest before they might make a _home_ instead of a _camp_.

Consider, if you would, a cottage.

When does a house become a home? It would be tempting to look at a quaint country cottage—a soft landing, a haven, a lover’s perch—and say, with great certainty, ‘ _love is the answer, love creates a home, love provides the happy ending_.’ In many ways, you would be correct. Love comes in many forms, after all.

For me, however, this was the beginning.

In my beginning, I was simply stone and timber and glass, coming together to form a cottage nestled in the hills of Devil’s Dyke— pleasant and peaceful, charming to look at, but ultimately oblivious to the world. Then two eternal beings brought their love inside my walls. They filled my rooms with their memories, tended my garden with their miracles, and I found myself waking up. It was a slow, dreamy awakening, one that hovered lazily in the hypnagogic space between un-being and being, as their thoughts and dreams and magic spilled over and filled my halls. As the dazzlingly bright love that shone between them lit me up from the inside.

They are the stars and I became their barycenter, and gradually, very gradually, I came to know the world in shades of sapphire and amber as their memories became my memories. Their love became something I shared with them.

Their stories became my stories.

An ancient scroll depicting stars and a comet has been preserved and set into a frame that hangs above the bed in my master bedroom. If you were to follow the hallway to my sitting room, you would find a wonderful mishmash of tartan throw pillows and black cashmere blankets. Overfilled bookshelves lining the walls and houseplants jockeying for a spot on the windowsills. A writer’s desk in one corner and a painter’s easel in another.

A photo album sits on the coffee table here, full of pictures from a globetrotting adventure taken after the world didn’t end— Aziraphale and Crowley smiling in each other’s arms at a Día de Muertos festival in Mexico, on an island in the Netherlands with a lighthouse in the background, on an unassuming street corner in Rome and picnicking by the Sakarya River in Turkey. Crowley’s drawings and Aziraphale’s letter live in this album as well, the song at the heart of everything.

Above my hearth are the portraits of two women, one a breathtaking splash of color while the other manages to shine magnificently despite being drawn in greyscale. A brightly painted maquizcóatl which once sat watch over the bookshop now hangs above the door leading from my kitchen to my back patio. And my garden is an impossible wonderland of apple trees and grapevines, marigolds and jasmine, chamomile, zinnas, and lily of the valley.

I don’t expect them to stay forever, and I don’t know what will happen to me when they leave, but such is the way of earthly things. I imagine I will go back to sleep. Perhaps another family will move in and my dreaming will find a way to shine through my walls, becoming a new story for new hearts to carry. Or perhaps my walls will crumble and I will become part of the land’s terroir, the earth holding my memory until such a time that someone else picks up my pieces and carries them further.

But for now, here in my garden, there are two. Two souls as the second bookend to a very long and unlikely story.

Since we need to end this story somewhere, let it be here.

* * *

**The South Downs - 2061**

Crowley follows the smells of jasmine and cider into the garden, and finds Aziraphale exactly where he expects. There is a small cluster of apple trees, six in total, at the edge of the garden that create a feeling of a grove in miniature— secluded, quiet, and magical. Over the years, Crowley has coaxed the grapevines growing near their trunks towards the trees, convincing them to wind their way into the branches and hang clusters of grapes alongside the apples.

Aziraphale had said this was _terribly_ romantic. Crowley had blushed and insisted that he just thought the colors looked nice together.

Today, Aziraphale lies sprawled on his back in the middle of the trees, eyes closed and hands hooked behind his head, a book resting on his chest and a tranquil smile on his lips. His shirtsleeves are rolled and cuffed at the elbow, and his top button is undone. His bowtie, along with Crowley’s sunglasses, have been left inside on the bedside table.

Even though the sight is a common one these days, Crowley’s heart soars with affection and he stops at the edge of the trees to lean and admire for a moment. When the taste of marigolds washes over Aziraphale, his smile grows wider, and he says, without opening his eyes, “Are you joining me, or are you just going to stand there grinning like a Cheshire Cat?”

Aziraphale’s voice is the dark sapphire color that accompanies his deepest contentment, and Crowley feels like he’s sinking into a warm bath as it wraps itself around him. “That depends a good deal on how distracting you intend to be,” he says in his own pleased, amber tone. “If I come over there and lose another twelve hours and then have to wait _seventy six years_ for the next chance to see my bastard space child—”

Aziraphale cuts him off with a heady rush of jasmine and a bright peal of periwinkle laughter. “I’m sorry, your _what_?” he says, opening his eyes and looking up at Crowley with amusement. “We are _not_ calling it that.”

“Didn’t land?” Crowley asks. He crosses his arms casually and stares up into the boughs. “Hmm. Cosmic peanut?”

“Terrible.”

“It’s shaped like a peanut!”

“Absolutely not the point.”

“Celestial speed demon?”

“ _How_ do these keep getting worse?” Aziraphale says, trying to hide a laugh behind a grimace. “What’s wrong with Icarus? We’ve been calling it that for ages, why the change of heart?”

“The git in the story fell into the sea and drowned, didn’t he?” Crowley says, pushing off the tree and sauntering into the grove. He flops on his belly beside Aziraphale, propping on his elbows and staring down at him with a sleepy smile. It’s late enough in the day that the sun is starting to entertain ideas of setting, giving the light a heavy, golden quality as is shimmers through the branches. “Not exactly a happy ending.”

“Have you considered,” Aziraphale says, stretching leisurely and rolling onto his side to face Crowley, “the possibility that the storytellers got it wrong? Maybe Icarus was a champion swimmer and they all just looked away too soon. What if everybody missed the part where he made it to an island paradise and lived out the remainder of his years in peace and happiness?”

Crowley rests his chin in his hand and tilts his head, admiration shining through his crooked smile. “Yeah, alright. You sold me. We can keep Icarus.”

“Oh, thank goodness.”

“So tell me,” Crowley drawls. “What book is so interesting that it pulled you out of bed, _abandoning_ me while I slept.”

Aziraphale snorts and gives his shoulder a playful shove, causing a draft of wine to flow between them. “I’ll have you know I laid in that bed and read for _six hours_.”

“Not my fault you wore me out.”

It had been an exceedingly lazy day, even by their standards. An impossibly rare morning that saw Aziraphale sleeping and Crowley slipping out of bed first, occupying himself by making breakfast. Coffee and crepes had ended with a slippered foot against a calf under the table, a gentle grazing of hands above it, then an overwhelming need to not have a table between them anymore. A need to have absolutely nothing between them, in fact.

Kissing had promptly led to hands tangled in hair and a mouth at a neck, which led to fumbling with the buttons of a pajama top while stumbling out of the kitchen. They had laughed and sighed bright marigolds and soft jasmine into each other the whole way down the hall, shucking clothes and colliding with more than a few walls before finding a soft landing, back in bed once again. For all intents and purposes, they had been lost to the world for the rest of the morning, drunk on each other and delighting in their ethereal garden.

“It’s Eliot, dear,” Aziraphale says with a laugh. “The one you left on my desk.”

“The which now?”

Aziraphale holds up the slim volume. “ _Four Quartets_? I wasn’t even aware you liked Eliot.”

“Uh. Do I?” Crowley says, wrinkling his nose and squinting at the book. “That sounds very romantic of me and all, but I assure you, I haven’t been pulling your books off the shelf. Poetry’s your thing.”

“Well _I_ certainly didn’t leave a book lying out _pages down_ —”

“And _I_ would never dream of— ohh, hang on,” Crowley interrupts, cutting off Aziraphale’s next retort by grinning marigolds into his mouth. “Which page, angel?”

Aziraphale stares at him for a moment before his eyebrows shoot up. “You don’t think—”

“Don’t see why not. The Bentley’s always had some sass to her.”

Aziraphale chuckles weakly and lets his gaze wander distractedly up to the canopy. “And I suppose the bookshop always was a bit… meddling.”

“I don’t know about _meddling_ , I always felt right at home in the bookshop.”

“Mm, imagine that. And I’ve always loved the Bentley very much.”

“ _Always_ , huh?” Crowley says with a devilish smile. “You should have told her _far_ sooner. Perhaps she could have avoided that spot of pining in the sixth century.”

“Amor fati, darling,” Aziraphale says serenely, leaning over to kiss the tip of Crowley’s nose. The smell of cider and taste of wine that accompanies the moment seems to pull the cluster of trees tighter around them, shielding them from the world.

“The book?” Crowley asks, clearing his throat. “What poetic nonsense does the cottage want to tell us?”

“Right. The book,” Aziraphale says, shaking himself out of his own sensory daze. He picks it up and lets the spine fall open to the poem it had been opened to when he found it. “‘Burnt Norton,’ then?” he murmurs, his eyes flickering across the garden to the cottage.

“Significant?”

Aziraphale gives a small shrug as his eyes drift across the page. “It’s the beginning,” he says, then feels a flush rise in his cheeks as he reaches a passage at the bottom.

Crowley just smiles as the cider wafts around him, and watches Aziraphale expectantly.

Aziraphale clears his throat and lets his eyes dart to Crowley before falling back to the page. “ _Desire itself is movement_ ,” he recites. “ _Not in itself desirable; Love is itself unmoving, only the cause and end of movement, timeless, and undesiring except in the aspect of time, caught in the form of limitation between un-being and being._ ”

“Okay, see,” Crowley says, bristling a bit as he leans over to point at the page, “how can you be sure it didn’t mean the bit above that? All this business about beginnings and endings and…” he squints. “Violins.”

“Do you _want_ it to mean that passage?” Aziraphale asks with a sly smile.

“Obviously not,” Crowley scoffs. “Not when there’s— a perfectly good bit about stars two pages back,” he finishes, his voice dropping to a mutter as a blush of his own creeps up his neck.

Aziraphale’s mouth falls open in shock and delight. “You _serpent._ You said—”

“I said poetry was your thing. Didn’t say it wasn’t mine too.”

Eyes dancing and heart singing, Aziraphale flips back two pages and starts scanning the page.

It’s with a slow fluid motion that Crowley reaches out and touches the hint of skin that is peeking from beneath Aziraphale’s collar. With a feather touch, he slides his fingers against Aziraphale’s collarbone and forges a path up his neck, around the curve of his jaw, lacing fingers in his hair. Aziraphale feels his breath catch and his eyes lose focus. He lets them flutter closed, forgetting the book and focusing instead on the wine and the marigolds. On the warm amber as Crowley leans in to press his lips against his temple and speak into his ear.

“ _The trilling wire in the blood,_ ” he murmurs, gently taking the book with his other hand and setting it aside. “ _Sings below inveterate scars, appeasing long forgotten wars._ ”

“Thirty years we’ve been here,” Aziraphale says breathlessly. “Six _thousand_ before that. _How_ am I just now finding out you like poetry?”

“Not my fault you don’t pay attention, chronicler,” Crowley replies, nipping at Aziraphale’s ear and sending the subtle spice of marigolds through both of their mouths. “Now hush, let me be romantic,” Aziraphale swallows a laugh and tilts his head back as Crowley begins to kiss his way down his neck.

He pauses at the delicate spot under Aziraphale’s jaw, pressing his lips to the pulse point and smiling at the taste of wine. “ _The dance along the artery_ ,” he continues in a low, slow voice. Aziraphale's breath stumbles out of him as a laugh and he wraps his arms around Crowley, pulling himself into a sitting position and Crowley into his lap.

Crowley grins down at him, all flowers and gold, and brings his hands to the back of Aziraphale’s neck, letting his fingertips dance across the sensitive skin there. Aziraphale rakes his hands up Crowley’s back and buries his face into the hollow of Crowley’s throat with a jewel-toned sigh.

“ _The circulation of the lymph_ ,” Crowley says softly into the cloud of Aziraphale’s hair.

The world around them seems to shimmer like a mirage as they start to fall into each other. This dream realm that exists in the space between them—the hum of color, the wine and the cider, the pull of the invisible threads—is always tangible these days, but following the threads back to their beginning and meeting each other in this middle place, this place that is both the stillness and the dance, is something they never tire of. Every time is a rush. Every time is a feast for the senses— the dancing shadows between darkness and light, chaos and noise pulling itself into tune to create music, the scent that leads a meal and the lingering taste that follows it.

The sound of the wind in the trees, the earthy smells floating in from the garden, the dusky evening light and the marbled shadows it creates as it meanders through the leaves— add to the sapphire and the amber like an incantation.

Crowley cups Aziraphale’s face in his hands, lifting his chin until their eyes meet. “ _Are figured in the drift of stars_ ,” he says, and leans in to kiss him.

It’s a kiss that somehow manages to feel like the first time, every time. The swoop in the stomach, the rush of blood to the head, the raw exhilaration as thoughts of _yours yours yours, I’m yours, always yours, only yours, I’ve been yours since before time existed, yours for as long as the earth has existed, yours until the sun burns out,_ rush through them.

“ _Dreadfully_ romantic,” Aziraphale says, when Crowley breaks from the kiss and presses their foreheads together. “Positively saccharine.”

“Can’t be helped. I have a house to one-up.”

“By all means, starmaker, please continue showing the cottage who’s boss,” Aziraphale says. He slips his hands under the hem of Crowley’s shirt and runs them up the bare skin of his back. “Don’t let me stop you.”

Crowley shivers under the touch, his eyes going hazy as he smells apples and cider and jasmine, tastes grapes and wine and marigolds. “Something… about summer, and— trees, and— _stars_ , angel,” he manages, his words becoming more difficult as Aziraphale’s mouth moves to his neck. His hands move with minds of their own, fluttering to Aziraphale’s collar and teasing apart the buttons. “Bloody… _stars_.”

They tip over the edge then, every sense alight, tasting, smelling, feeling nothing but each other as they fall back into the grass. Aziraphale’s hands tangle in the fabric of Crowley’s shirt, dragging it up and over his head. Crowley’s hands fly back to Aziraphale’s chest, continuing their ministrations at the buttons until they’re able to slide inside and around Aziraphale’s back where he arches toward him. Their mouths never stray far, always smiling and laughing into each other, gasping and sighing, finding new ways to breathe each other in.

There is desire here, as they pull away each other’s clothes, exposing skin prickled with goosebumps to the warm summer evening, exploring each other’s bodies with hands and teeth and tongues. A desire to touch, to be _closer_ , to feel as much of _you_ with as much of _me_ as possible. It’s desire, but it’s also patient. Attentive and slow.

Desire without urgency.

And there is need here, too. Need that works its way up from a warm pool in the belly, that steals the air from the chest, that prickles its way through the limbs like electricity. A paired need that meets in the space between them, a place of hushed understanding. When Crowley presses Aziraphale down into the grass and lowers himself onto him, it’s unhurried. Tranquil and reverent.

Need without desperation.

But most of all, there is love. Small moments of stillness dropped into the sea of sensory language.

Aziraphale’s fingers pressing into Crowley’s thighs, firm and grounding. Crowley splaying his hands slowly across Aziraphale’s chest before beginning to move around him. Their eyes finding each other as the memory of an orchard on an abandoned Earth passes between them.

Crowley squeezing his eyes shut against a wave of emotion six thousand years high. Aziraphale lifting a hand to gently cup the side of Crowley’s face. The soft brush of a thumb against his jaw, a jasmine smile and the taste of wine, a sea breeze to bring his ship home.

Two breaths catching as Aziraphale sits up and pulls Crowley against him. As Crowley hooks his ankles behind Aziraphale’s hips. As they press into a kiss. _I knew you in the marigolds. I loved you in the jasmine. I found you so many times. I chose you every time._

Love without reservation.

And later, when the sun has set and a blanket has been summoned, after the stars have blinked awake but before the moon rises, it’s a different kind of love too. It’s Aziraphale demanding to know exactly _when_ Crowley developed a taste for poetry. It’s Crowley waggling his eyebrows and saying he’s had a taste for bookish types since before he can remember. It’s laughter and admiration and delighting in new ways to surprise each other.

It’s a love that nourishes. A love that gives Crowley the strength to turn his face to the comet and bask in its light for the first time, his fingers twirling idly through Aziraphale’s hair. A love that swells in Aziraphale as he sighs and leans into Crowley, handing the reins to his imagination and weaving new tales about Icarus the champion swimmer.

They lie in their garden under the comet’s glow until the moon sets and the sky pales, telling each other stories about Icarus the poet, the artist, the gardener. Icarus the scholar, the dancer, the magician.

The adventurer who befriended dragons. The baker who fell in love with a scribe.

It’s one ending to a thousand different stories, and the beginning of a thousand more.

_“And do not call it fixity,_   
_Where past and future are gathered. Neither movement from nor towards,_   
_Neither ascent nor decline. Except for the point, the still point,_   
_There would be no dance, and there is only the dance.”_

-T.S. Eliot, “Burnt Norton”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The loved.](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/5jRGmNalq6ZL05jniZM2YE?si=zdikr4ZFSSuZIxiN_Ve3WA)
> 
> Anyone interested in reading notes, references, and research done for this story can follow [this link](https://jessicafish.tumblr.com/post/615054501980848128/references-for-a-portrait-in-synesthesia) for further information.
> 
> A handful of you might have noticed that I have some very particular South Downs headcanons (and big emotions about the body swap). All I have to say for myself is that I wrote my other fic about the cottage while outlining this one and untangling my feelings about meteor showers. If you enjoyed the surreal body swap, nature imagery, and the schmoopy stargazing in the garden, then chances are you'll like the spin I put on things in [The Home On My Back.](https://archiveofourown.org/series/1460998)
> 
> The synesthesia project is one that started in July ([JULY!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AfxtuZ6v9m8)), and I'm _so_ excited that it's finally complete and released into the world. The very first plot bunny came from the song [Bittersweet Genesis For Him and Her](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ynx_tvMX4lM) by Kishi Bashi, and while the story beyond Eden took on a branching, flowering life of its own, everything can be traced back to the original seed of _“a portrait of the sacred friend, in synesthesia.”_
> 
> If you'd like a comet's eye view of this whole story and all the bunnies it spawned (or: sources for the chapters titles plus a little extra), [here's a playlist for you](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/2JmNGEnDsVrcN9fVkfspcM?si=yP5aSpHzRsCIQA3sLArHaA).
> 
> If the idea of "a setting as a character" is something that interests you, I HIGHLY recommend Jeff VanderMeer's _Southern Reach_ trilogy, N.K. Jemisin's _Broken Earth_ trilogy, and T.S. Eliot's _Four Quartets_ (the Eliot is maybe a stretch, but it's how I read it, so do with that what you will). I also took a lot of personal inspiration for this story from a whirlwind 2019 that started with a dear friend blowing my entire imagination wide open by saying ' _the Eta Aquariids are just Halley's ghost story_ ,' ended with marriage and Eliot and Irish hedgerows, and had a camping trip somewhere in the middle where I got to look at Jupiter's moons through an observatory telescope. 
> 
> Life has had its share of downs. Quite a lot of them, in fact. But it also has a way of bouncing back full of light and fight and spirit. Find the known point in the darkness and hang in there for the flash of the lighthouse. <3
> 
> The artist for this fic can be found on Tumblr [@katartstrophe](https://katartstrophe.tumblr.com/) or on Twitter [@katartstrophe](https://twitter.com/katartstrophe). I can be found on Tumblr [@jessicafish](https://jessicafish.tumblr.com/). We're both friendly, come say hello!

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] A Portrait in Synesthesia](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24894388) by [D20Owlbear](https://archiveofourown.org/users/D20Owlbear/pseuds/D20Owlbear), [GottaGoBuyCheese](https://archiveofourown.org/users/GottaGoBuyCheese/pseuds/GottaGoBuyCheese), [imperiousheiress](https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperiousheiress/pseuds/imperiousheiress), [Quandtuniverse](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quandtuniverse/pseuds/Quandtuniverse), [silentsonata](https://archiveofourown.org/users/silentsonata/pseuds/silentsonata)




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